Last Chance
by Dana Holmes
Summary: AU after Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort is in control of the wizarding world. Harry is captured and placed under Voldemort's protection because of the horcrux.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Last Chance  
><span>Author:<span> Dragon_of_Venus  
><span>Pairings:<span> Voldemort/Harry  
><span>Rating (Fic):<span> NC-17  
><span>Rating (Chapter):<span> PG-13  
><span>Word-Count (Fic):<span> 35,000-40,000  
><span>Word-Count (Chapter):<span> 5,417  
><span>Master List:<span> [To be established when Chapter 2 is posted]  
><span>Summary:<span> AU after Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort is in control of the wizarding world. Harry is captured and placed under Voldemort's protection because of the horcrux.  
><span>Warnings (Fic):<span> Discussions of rape, graphic attempted rape (not in the main pairing), suicide, character death, slurs, sexual harassment, abductions, history of violence within the main pairing, mentions of hate crimes and torture.  
><span>Warnings (Chapter):<span> Abduction, talk of death, including the death of children.  
><span>Contains:<span> Consensual sex between adults, masturbation, voyerism, Voldemort-wins AU.  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> Harry Potter and all related characters, settings, and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling, not to me. Receive no money for writing this or any other Harry Potter related piece.  
><span>Author's Note:<span> Well, this turned out to be quite the header. Sorry about that, but it's all necessary information. I'll update daily for as long as I can, which will hopefully be until the fic is finished.

At 11:55 on the night of November 19th, 2000, a middle-aged redhead was furiously scribbling an address down on a sheet of printer paper. He looked it over once when he was finished before folding it haphazardly, shoving it into an envelope, and tying it to the leg of an owl. He walked over to a window, but hesitated before he opened it up.

"Last chance, Hermione," he said though a sigh. "Are you coming with me?"

Hermione looked up briefly when she heard her name, but then she realized who was speaking and what he was asking and she immediately returned her gaze to the floor. "Not without my friends."

Hermione, Harry Potter, and the Weasley had been their prisoners for approximately four days. They'd been found in a forest in Albania and their trust had been quickly won when their discoverers said that they were muggleborn and passed a short oral muggle studies quiz to prove it. The moment the kids made the horrible mistake of letting their discoverers into their tent, they'd been stunned, bound, and brought here for the duration of the negotiations. The three of them were, at that moment, positioned _exactly_as Voldemort had requested them: In the bedroom nearest the front door, on the bed on their knees with their hands behind their back, immobilized from the shoulders down, facing a blank wall.

"He'll kill you."

She took a very deep breath. "Let him kill me. I'll die fighting for my life _with my friends_."

"Hermione—" the pureblood boy said, but Hermione cut him off.

"Ronald Weasley, _stop it_. I _will_die fighting if—when—"

"Yes," the man said, "You'll die fighting for your life with your friends, and your wonderful friends will live because of their precious pure-blood names." He turned around and tried to meet her eyes, but couldn't. After a bit of a pause, he added, "It won't be much of a fight, you know."

"More of one than if I run away."

The man opened his mouth, then closed it again as he changed his mind about what to say. "Look, I know you're mad at me right now. You have every right in the world to be. But the right way to express anger toward _me_ is not to get _yourself_murdered."

Hermione was silent.

"God _dammit_, Hermione, I didn't do all this just to leave a _kid_ to her death!" It had seemed like such a _simple_ plan, at first. Find Harry Potter, hold him hostage, and promise him to the Dark Lord in exchange for the release of all muggleborns from Azkaban and three Snatcher-free days to get their affairs in order and get out of the country. Voldemort had been almost _easy_to work with, once he was convinced that they actually had Harry Potter.

"You most certainly _did_. The only thing that's upsetting you now is that one of the kids you're leaving to their deaths is a _muggleborn_."

The man swore. "Stubborn bitch. I've half a mind to take you with me whether you like it or not."

"I'll come right back, and _see_ if I don't kill you on my way out." The ice in Hermione's voice surprised even Hermione. Secretly, she was a bit confused. She was absolutely certain that she was_not_ going with this man and that she would never be able to quite forgive him for kidnapping her and her friends and so willingly leaving her two best friends to the Dark Lord. That he was trying to rescue Hermione herself was a very small comfort to Hermione. At the same time, however, she could understand all too well the desperation that had driven him and the muggleborns he'd been working with to do this. Everyone had been in a constant state of moral terror for _years_ now. Children were dying. It wasn't hard to imagine that pushing someone to the point where they'd do _anything_to make it stop... Still, Harry didn't deserve this. He'd been nothing but a friend to the muggleborn community for as long as he'd been in the wizarding world, and in many ways he had more in common with them than he ever had with his fellow half-bloods...

Stephen took a step back, grateful for a moment that she wasn't looking at him. Stephen McFarland hadn't known Hermione Granger long. She'd been a rather docile prisoner for most of the last four days, pleading for the release of her friends but otherwise putting up little fight. Stephen had on several occasions caught glimpses in her eyes of the conflict going on inside of her. She'd never threatened anyone in their group before, and Stephen was shocked to find that now that she _was_making threats, he was inclined to take her very, very seriously.

A clock struck twelve. Stephen quickly opened the window with shacking hands and half threw the owl outside. He spun back around to the look at the kids. "_Last_last chance, Her—"

"I'm not leaving without them!"

The man took a long breath. "Fine," he said before running to the dresser on the other side of the room and picking a wand off it. "I promised him the boys, not you." He freed Hermione from the immobilization spell and quickly handed her the wand, then disapparated without another word.

Hermione looped one arm with Harry's and grabbed Ron's shoulder. She tried to disapparate, but she couldn't. She tapped Harry on the shoulder with the wand and attempted the counter-spell to every immobilization spell she knew, but none of them worked. In a last desperate attempt, she hooked her hands beneath Ron's shoulders and tried to drag him to closet. He wouldn't move. She couldn't even make the blankets move beneath him. Failure after failure was crammed into five tense minutes as their frustration and horror grew.

Then they all heard the front door open. Hermione brushed the tears from her eyes and stared down for a moment at Ron's wand in her hand. She flattened herself against the wall next to the door and strained to hear the sound of footsteps. Could she kill them? She could stun them, at least, as long as she was fast. There didn't seem to be very many of them.

The hallway was completely silent for an entire minute. Hermione began to wonder if she'd only imagined the sound of the door. She looked to Ron for some confirmation, and he looked just as confused as she was. She couldn't see Harry's face from where she stood. She twirled Ron's wand between her fingers slightly and wondered if she should chance a look up the hallway. She didn't think so. She'd be visible before she'd be able to see. That was probably what they wanted. She'd wait for them.

A wand snaked around the door and was pressed to her forehead before she even caught a glimpse of it. "Drop the wand," an unmistakable voice said.

Ron's wand fell to the floor.

Voldemort stepped into the room and kicked the wand aside as though it were a child's toy that had been left out.

"I'd hoped I'd be seeing you here, Hermione. Sit down. And Harry..." Voldemort made an intricate movement with his wand, "...turn around, please. Let's not spend any more time here than we have to."

Harry turned around very slowly, as though the immobilization spell hadn't been completely removed, and gave Hermione a pained look. She helped him adjust his legs into what she hoped was a more comfortable position, and sat facing the Dark Lord with him, wandless and very much at his mercy. There was a small amount of comfort that Hermione and Ron could take in the fact that they hadn't been killed _yet_, but there was no telling just _how_annoyed Voldemort was with them at this point, and Hermione knew from Harry's stories that Voldemort liked an audience when he killed. It was entirely possible that he was merely waiting for his Death Eaters to arrive. Harry, in any case, had little to hope for.

"I was hoping to see you here, Hermione," Voldemort said, smiling slightly.

"Oh really? What, are your servants wanting for victims already?"

Voldemort chuckled, but his eyes narrowed dangerously. Hermione lowered her gaze to the floor, but found it within herself not to scoot away from him as he twirled his wand in an unspoken threat. "That is hardly my biggest concern at the moment... I have a gift for you." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of parchment. "...If you'll accept it, that is." He held it out for her. When she hesitated for several seconds, he sighed. "If I wanted to hurt you, Hermione, I'd do so with something far more mature than a howler. Don't be rude."

It was apparent, in any case, that he _would_want to hurt Hermione if she refused for any longer. She took the parchment. With trembling fingers she unrolled it and took a deep breath. The writing was very small, but it was immediately clear what was on the page.

It was a rather elaborately drawn family tree. It had almost certainly been done magically, and Hermione had a feeling that _somehow_ it would pass falsification tests, but there was no conceivable way that it was true. Hermione's own name was rather large in the lower left-hand corner, and in smaller writing up and all across the rest of the page was a detailed tracing of what was clearly_supposed_to be her lineage, going back to the 15th century. Hector Dagworth-Granger was a third cousin of hers, eyeballing it. It even had her parents names right, but with the glaring error that, right beneath their names, where it listed everyone's blood status, it had her father listed as a "blood-traitor." Hermione herself was given as a half-blood.

"I hope you appreciate this..." Voldemort said. Hermione glanced at him and noticed that his eyes were on _Harry_, not on her.

Her eyes returned to the page. Something very pressing caught her attention and her heart seemed to plummet into the floorboards. Her skin went cold and her head spun lightly, but she managed to look back up at Voldemort and speak. "It says that both my parents are deceased." She fought to keep her expression blank. She hoped to hear him deny it but she searched his face for confirmation.

Voldemort rolled his eyes. "Don't be stupid, girl. I don't know that your parents are dead and I don't _care_to know. That note is a matter of convenience, not of good record keeping. No one is going to ask you to produce this wizarding parent if all records say he's a corpse."

Hermione swallowed the painful lump in her throat. _He doesn't know. He doesn't know. No news is good news._After a long minute, she'd convinced herself of this matter at least enough to press on with the conversation. "Why would you do this? What do you want from me?"

Voldemort chuckled. Calmly and completely without permission, he took Hermione's left hand in his right and pulled it toward him, raising and extending her left arm. He turned her hand over, and Hermione knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"You can't be serious..." She heard herself say, though she hadn't meant for the words to leave her head.

"Quite, Hermione. You're an extremely skilled young woman. I could help you develop those skills."

"I've had very little trouble developing them myself for the last twenty years, thank you very much."

His grip on her hand tightened. "Quite obviously! And yet, you won't be a child forever. It's rather easy to be the brightest student in your year or even in all of Hogwarts in your day. I suppose they called you 'the brightest witch of your age' quite often, didn't they? I was called me the brightest wizard of my age nearly daily when I was a teen... Yes, I don't doubt that they did and I think the odds are rather good that they were right. That's why I'm going so far out of my way for you. But do you know what I discovered after I left school, Hermione?"

Hermione shook her head.

"I discovered that, after a certain point, books were entirely useless. You can become the brightest witch _of your age_ by reading old tomes and spitting their secrets right back out at the professor, but once you get into the adult world, no one cares about how you compare to others of your age. They care how you compare to _all_ other adults..." He let go of her hand, but gave her a pointed look that said he wanted her to keep it where he'd left it. "...and you will _never_ become the brightest witch of your _lifetime_ without forsaking discovery and embracing creation. Creating spells is a _baby-step_ on this path and yet I don't think you've taken it yet. Hermione, join me and I will open up the secrets of the universe to you. Mortality, love, divinity... Hone your skills and you _will_do that which is now thought to be impossible. Many who were less talented than you have. However, you can't walk this path alone. Let me lead you. I'll show you what I know and you can help me learn more, and in a few decades there's no telling what incredible things you'll be capable of..."

"Why? Why would you even make a _mudblood_this offer?"

Voldemort raised an eyebrow pointedly, but Hermione didn't back down. After a second, he sighed. "Two reasons," he said, folding the edge of her sleeve down. "First," he continued to roll up her sleeve quite carefully, "I do believe that you're an exceptionally talented witch and that you'd be a great asset to me. Second, I do not intend to kill Harry, and I think I can make him much more _manageable_with you alive." He carefully folded her sleeve up above her elbow.

Hermione looked slowly from the pale skin of her arm to his pale face.

"Think of it this way," he said, grabbing her hand again with his left hand and touching his wand to her arm. "If you refuse, I'm going to kill you instantly. What use would that be to anyone? If you agree, not only will you be doing yourself an incredible favor, you'll also have the rest of your life to help me look after Harry. That's why you didn't leave with the other mudbloods, isn't it?"

Hermione hesitated. She looked to Harry for some guidance, but he just looked away from her. Hermione didn't blame him. If he told Hermione to refuse him, he was condemning her to immediate and inevitable death. If he told her to accept, he was making the extraordinarily selfish demand that she sacrifice her soul to save her life. She turned to Ron.

Ron gave her a pained look. "'Mione," he said, "Nothing's more irreversible than you _dying_."

Ron was right, of course. Even if Voldemort was aware that she would be rather inclined to be a double-agent—which he surely was—there was no telling what opportunities might arise in the future as long as she lived to see the future. Maybe being a half-blood Death Eater would even be _good_. If she could find a way to gain favor with Voldemort without losing herself, she might be able to push for _at least_the lesser evils whenever it became time to make decisions. If she died here and now, there was nothing in the future that could help her and nothing she could do to help anyone else. Even if she said yes now and let him mark her now, she would at least have a chance to run away later.

She took a deep breath. _Just stay alive..._"A—Alright."

Voldemort looked quite pleased with himself. "Smart girl. We'll do it now. _Proteus morsmordre!_" Hermione screamed and nearly pulled her hand away as the faint outline of a Dark Mark appeared on her arm, but Voldemort had been ready for this. His grip was firmer than any of the young Gryffindors would have guessed him to be capable of and though Hermione's arm rocked as much as it could without detaching from her shoulder, her hand didn't move. After a long minute, the pain faded to a dull heat and Hermione's arm stilled. She looked up at Voldemort rather desperately, silently pleading with him to tell her they were done now.

He chuckled. Hermione could only hope that the _worst_of it was over, at least. "Will you, Hermione Granger, obey me, the Dark Lord Voldemort, whenever I give you a command, regardless of your own feelings about that command?"

Hermione swallowed hard. This spell was beginning to sound quite a bit like an Unbreakable Vow. But it couldn't be an Unbreakable Vow, could it? She'd _seen_Death Eaters disobey the Dark Lord before. Besides, Unbreakable Vows required a third-party Bonder, which they didn't have. In any case, she didn't really want to find out what would happen if she attempted to go back now. "I will," she said. Her voice trembled.

Another horrible rush of pain moved through Hermione's arm. This time she bit down the scream, but couldn't stop herself from a second round of frantically attempting to pull away from Voldemort as the Dark Mark was retraced, darkening the outline slightly and leaving the inside of the mark the pale color of a horrible scar. Again, Voldemort was completely prepared for the struggle and Hermione's hand didn't move an inch from where he wanted it.

"And will you come to me whenever I summon you, whether the summons is delivered through the burning of this mark, a signed letter, or a message from one of your fellow Death Eaters?"

_Her fellow Death Eaters..._ Hermione's head spun slightly. What was she doing? Still, she'd already actually _agreed_to the first part of the vow. It was definitely too late to turn back now. She braced herself for another round of pain and whispered, "I will."

She again resisted the urge to scream, but a horrible whine came out of the back of her throat. Tears formed in her eyes. Voldemort allowed her to reach up with her right hand and dry them, but they were loath to stop as the magic traced the mark again and left it a furious red. Her arm trembled within the Dark Lord's, but he loosened his grip enough to allow blood to start flowing to her fingers again when he was confident that she was not going to attempt to pull away anymore. Even after the pain faded, it took Hermione a moment to dry her eyes.

Voldemort gave her what was supposed to be an encouraging smile and took a deep breath. Hermione took the hint and took a very deep breath of her own.

"And will you remain faithful to my ideals and to the ideals of my servants, and do all in your power to promote them?"

_No. Never—_She had no choice. "I will."

At the final rush of pain Hermione flung herself backwards with as much force as she could manage, but Voldemort's grip quickly tightened again and her hand remained in place. With pain as though someone had lit a carefully controlled fire on her arm, the mark was turned from its horrible red to an evil black. Hermione looked at it and felt sick to her stomach as it occurred to her that, whether this choice turned out for the better or for the worse, she'd be living with it for the rest of her life.

By the time the pain faded, tears were flowing freely from Hermione's cheeks. Voldemort dropped her arm carelessly. "You did very well," he said. "More faithful Death Eaters than you have needed to be immobilized to get through the marking."

Just like that, he left Hermione to her tears and turned to Harry. "_You_would love a choice between death and service to me, I'm sure," Voldemort said cheerily.

"It wouldn't exactly make my day," Harry said, stealing a brief concerned glance at Hermione before going on. "But I can't say that it would be a terribly _difficult_choice."

"Unfortunately for you," Voldemort said, "I really can't offer you a choice. It would be terribly unfortunate for me if you died."

"Oh? Is that why you tried to kill me all those times?"

Voldemort sighed. "Things change, Harry. New information surfaces. I'm surprised you haven't realized it yourself yet..."

"Apparently I haven't. Please enlighten me."

"There is a horcrux inside of you. You know what that means, I'm sure..." Voldemort glared at him for a moment, but then his gaze softened. "My immortality is now contingent upon yours. You can consider yourself—willingly or not—under my protection for the rest of your life, which I intend to be a very, very long time. You will make a vow—Not an Unbreakable Vow, of course. That would rather defeat the point. A Self-Monitoring Vow would suit us quite nicely. It's the mother of the Unbreakable, and the consequences for disobedience, while still quite nasty, are not nearly as dire. Give me your hand, Harry. Hermione will be our Bonder."

"I'm not swearing _anything_to—"

"Crucio."

Ron's screams were so loud they drowned out Harry's pleading, which began almost immediately. Ron's body, still immobilized from the shoulders down, was completely still, but his head thrashed violently in every direction and tears began to fall from his eyes. Even Hermione recovered instantly from her own pain to beg her new master to stop. It was an entire two minutes before he did.

"Again, Harry, give me your hand."

Slowly, Harry did. He looked to Hermione for help, but this time she couldn't bear to give it. Voldemort, however, reached down and took Harry's right hand in his, raised Harry's arm a bit, and intertwined their fingers. Harry's scar throbbed horribly, but he swallowed the cries of pain and for Ron's sake kept his eyes open and on Voldemort.

"Hermione," Voldemort said, "Get your wand. I believe it's rolled under the dresser."

Hermione hesitated a moment, wondering if she was most likely to be punished for getting her own wand, for getting Ron's wand and not telling him it wasn't hers, or for asking him to clarify which wand he wanted her to get. She ultimately decided that his _actual_order had been clear and that his second sentence had been a footnote at best. She walked across the room and picked her wand up off the top of the dresser, leaving Ron's wand where it was, sticking about halfway out from underneath the dresser. Voldemort gave her an odd look, but didn't think it was even worth commenting on.

Hermione touched the tip of her wand just between their middle fingers, so that it was touching both of them.

"State your full name," Voldemort said, giving Harry a sharp look.

"Harry James Potter." A blue glow surrounded their hands. Harry was rather relieved to find that it didn't hurt, though it did give him a strange vibrating sensation in his fingers.

"State _my_full name."

"Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Voldemort's eyes told Harry immediately that he would pay for that as soon as the vow was finished, but the glow around their fingers turned a mossy green color and Voldemort went on.

"Repeat after me: I will _never_deliberately endanger my own life. The Dark Lord Voldemort is the final authority on what is and is not deliberately endangering my own life, and if I am ever unclear as to whether or not something counts as endangering my own life, I will ask him." It was quite a bit, but Voldemort said it slowly enough for Harry to remember it.

Harry gritted his teeth. He didn't want... but Voldemort would just start torturing Ron again if he stopped, and Ron was _nothing_to Voldemort. Voldemort would torture him into madness and move right on to Hermione if Harry didn't consent. He'd keep going until everyone Harry loved was mental. Then what would be the point of any of this? "I will never deliberately endanger my own life. The Dark Lord Voldemort is the final authority on what is and is not deliberately endangering my own life, and if I am ever unclear as to whether or not something counts as endangering my own life, I will ask him."

The glow turned to a soft yellow.

Voldemort smiled. "I will never seriously entertain thoughts of killing or otherwise harming the Dark Lord Voldemort," he said, slightly faster.

Harry's heart sank. Still, there was nothing else he could do. "I will never seriously entertain thoughts of killing or otherwise harming the Dark Lord Voldemort." He had the rest of his life to find a way around that, or to accept the consequences for doing it, whatever they may be.

The glow turned orange.

"I will remain at all times where the Dark Lord Voldemort can find me. I will not leave the home of the Death Eater he has ordered me to reside with without honestly informing the Death Eater in question of my intended destination and return time and obtaining his or her clear permission to leave. I will return when or before I said I would return."

Harry swallowed hard. He hoped these vows weren't going to get any longer, or else Harry wouldn't be able to remember them no matter how slowly Voldemort spoke them. Still, the spell seemed to be helping Harry's memory. Harry was sure he wouldn't normally be able to do even this much word-for-word. "I will remain at all times where the Dark Lord Voldemort can find me... I will not leave the home of the Death Eater he has ordered me to reside with without... honestly informing the Death Eater in question of my intended destination and return time and obtaining his or her clear permission to leave. I will return when or before I said I would return."

The vibration between their hands intensified, and the glow turned blood red and expanded outward in a sphere until it's highest point was about halfway up Hermione's wand, and then it shrunk back in very quickly and disappeared somewhere between Harry and Voldemort's hands. Voldemort let go and Hermione drew her wand back. It was done.

"So," Harry said, struggling to move his hand up to his forehead, "What happens if I break that vow?"

Voldemort reached over casually and swiped a finger across Harry's forehead to stop the blood that was running down from his scar from reaching his eyes. Harry recoiled, though he realized that Voldemort probably meant well enough.

Voldemort looked from the blood on his finger to Harry a few times. "It hurts you when I touch your scar?"

"Anytime your _near_me, really."

Voldemort nodded, but looked troubled.

"You didn't answer my question."

"And I won't," Voldemort said, smiling smugly. "I think it's good for you not to know. Now, let's get all three of you home... Hm... I'll have to take you individually. You're going to different places." Harry and Hermione both opened their mouths to object, but a dark look in his eyes stopped them. He made another intricate movement with his wand, and the stiffness in Harry's muscles vanished. "You first, Harry. Hermione, stay here a moment." He walked over to the dresser and picked Harry's wand up, then inclined his head toward the door. "There's an anti-apparation charm over this house. Only your dear captor has permission to move in and out of it freely. You'll have to step outside with me. Come along, Harry."

Harry gave both of his friends a pained and desperate look, but ultimately followed Voldemort outside. There was a freezing wind blowing and light, icy rain falling on their heads, but they weren't forced to say in it for long. Voldemort took Harry's hand, and in the darkness Harry almost thought he looked _apologetic_for doing so, and apparated them both into a comfortable library.

Harry let go of Voldemort and took several steps away from him before he allowed himself to look around. It was a large room with cherry wood bookcases covering the walls, even wrapping around windows and doors, some no doubt magically supported, with cushiony red chairs and sofas scattered around beneath ornate golden chandeliers. The flames provided both a calming golden glow to the room and a slight warmth that was very pleasant after being out in the cold. It wasn't as bad as it might have been. Harry had to admit that he'd had it in his mind that all Death Eaters lived in dark mansions with skulls all over the place. This was... better. The idea of staying here for a while wasn't entirely unpleasant to Harry.

It got considerably more unpleasant when he realized just who the man who'd stood up from one of the chairs to bow to Voldemort was. It had been a while since Harry had seen Rodolphus Lestrange, and in the time they'd been apart he'd cut his hair, grayed a _bit_ more, though the majority of his hair was still brown, done a considerable amount of working out, and regained enough color to his cheeks and enough signs of life in his brown eyes that Harry could imagine that twenty years ago he might have been handsome, but now he looked above all else like a man _at least_ in his mid-fifties who had certainly seen _better_days, though Harry knew he had also seen worse days. He seemed slightly exasperated and no more thrilled about having Harry in his house than Harry was to be there.

"My Lord," Rodolphus said, "It appears that all went well...?"

"_Better_than I had hoped, Rodolphus. But my tasks for the night aren't done yet. I will update you all at the next meeting. In the meantime..." He nudged Harry forward slightly. "Here's this. Harry, until further notice, Rodolphus is in charge of you whenever you are out of my presence. Oh, and your wand..." He handed it over.

"If you really are hoping to _prevent_me from committing suicide," Harry said, "Leaving me with the Lestranges is a bit counter-productive."

Voldemort and Rodolphus shared a dark laugh. "I disagree," Voldemort said. "I'm confident that Rodolphus will take _excellent_care of you, and he will answer to me if he doesn't." Rodolphus got very quiet very quickly.

"And yet," Harry said, "_I_am equally confident that you have servants that I hate marginally less who would do just as good a job. Where are you taking Ron and Hermione? Can't I go with them?"

"_No_," Voldemort said. He silently cast a stinging hex that hit Harry on the arm. "I happen to think that the animosity you and Bella in particular quite obviously feel for one another will work to my advantage. You will remain here until _I_ feel it's appropriate to move you somewhere else. As for your friends, Weasley is going home, where he belongs. I wouldn't expect to see him terribly soon, if I were you. Hermione will be staying with a fellow servant of mine. I don't think you quite need to know _whom_ yet. _Good night_, Harry." He nodded to Rodolphus and said, much more politely, "And to you, Rodolphus."

"Good night, my lord!" Rodolphus said as Voldemort disapparated.

Rodolphus looked Harry over for a moment with hard eyes. His eyebrows raised slightly. '_Really?_' his eyes seemed to say. Harry felt oddly embarrassed about his messy hair and the fact that during the three days he'd been a hostage he hadn't been presented with too many opportunities to shower or change his clothes. Even his bloody scar seemed suddenly like something he should be quite embarrassed about, though it wasn't in any way his own fault.

Finally, Rodolphus spoke. "I'm not thrilled about this either, you know."

Harry sighed. "I'm allowed to leave with your permission, I think. Can I go get a hotel and—"

"_No_, Potter. I _dislike_ you, but I don't have a death wish." He sighed. "You look like you've had a hard couple of... years. Let me show you to your room."


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Last Chance  
><span>Author:<span> Dragon_of_Venus  
><span>Pairings:<span> Voldemort/Harry  
><span>Rating (Fic):<span> NC-17  
><span>Rating (Chapter):<span> PG-13  
><span>Word-Count (Fic):<span> 35,000-40,000  
><span>Word-Count (Chapter):<span> 5,667  
><span>Summary:<span> AU after Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort is in control of the wizarding world. Harry is captured and placed under Voldemort's protection because of the horcrux.  
><span>Warnings (Fic):<span> Discussions of rape, graphic attempted rape (not in the main pairing), suicide, character death, slurs, sexual harassment, abductions, history of violence within the main pairing, mentions of hate crimes and torture.  
><span>Warnings (Chapter):<span> Bigotry, discussions of torture, mentions of minor character death  
><span>Contains:<span> Consensual sex between adults, BDSM, masturbation, voyerism, Voldemort-wins AU.  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> Harry Potter and all related characters, settings, and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling, not to me. I receive no money for writing this or any other Harry Potter related piece. 

_Most_ Death Eater meetings were really not very bad. They happened once every two weeks or so, and there was a certain rhythm to them that, once you got used to it, was almost relaxing. The location of the next meeting would be passed around by word of mouth several days before the meeting itself, and if it was taking place in the home of a poorer Death Eater the wealthier ones would complain about the "bad entertainment" and if it was in the home of wealthier Death Eater the wealthier Death Eaters would complain that the poorer ones were trying to eat them out of house and home. In either case, they'd all be summoned a good twenty minutes before Voldemort planned to begin the meeting, so everyone would have plenty of time to greet their friends, grab whatever alcoholic beverage their host had been able to find an ocean of on short notice, and form a crude circle on whatever seats were available. Many a poor half-blood spent every other meeting on the floor. Hermione, of course, was one of those "half-bloods" and shunned even by the rest of _them_.

This was more unpleasant than usual on this particular week, because Walden Macnair was apparently not a firm believe in brooms _or_ in cleaning his work equipment after a job. There were drops of blood every five feet or so on the filthy wooden floor. The best Hermione had been able to do for herself was sit as far from the dirty walls as she could without it looking unnatural and promise herself that she'd throw her robes away later. After some intense debate, she'd decided not to take anything she was offered to drink in this house.

Once everyone was settled down and getting a good start at not being able to stand by the end of the meeting, Voldemort would arrive and launch into a long, tedious update on ministry affairs, the birth rates of pure-blood children and what could be done to raise them, the education children were receiving at Hogwarts, and any enemies or potential enemies that he wanted the Death Eaters as a whole to start casually keeping their eyes on, as well as updates about the people they'd _been_ keeping their eyes on. Then he'd give a few short notes to individual Death Eaters and dismiss everyone but those he needed a singular audience with. There was very little change in this routine.

However, two things were different on night of Hermione's third Death Eater meeting.

The first and immediately noticeable difference was that Harry had arrived with the Lestranges. He hadn't been allowed to attend the meeting; Instead he'd been shoved into a bathroom on the main floor and a quick sticking charm had been cast on the door to keep in it, but he certainly hadn't attended the last two and obviously he wasn't _quite_ welcome at this one, so his presence stood out not only to Hermione but to a number of other people.

The second was Neville Longbottom walking into the room five minutes before the meeting formally began, trembling from head to toe but completely ignored by all of the other Death Eaters, and sitting down next to Hermione, begging her for help with his eyes. He'd certainly seen better days. He'd put on a few pounds and was sickly pale. He didn't seem to notice the disgusting floor, and he immediately threw back a drink of firewhiskey that was much larger than Hermione would have guessed him to be capable of keeping down. He sat the rather tall glass down on the floor next to him and turned to her silently.

She ignored the sneers of everyone around them and threw her arms around him and squeezed as though she were afraid that if she let go he'd be taken away from her. His arms warped around her thin body and squeezed back just as tightly. He was definitely rounder, so Hermione took some comfort in the fact that he was being fed, at least. He was stess-eating, almost certainly. He always had put on a few pounds right around exams. Hermione always lost weight, and Neville would offer a few extra pounds. Hermione couldn't remember the last time she was so glad to see someone. A thousand questions came out simply as a breathless "Neville," to affirm to herself that the man in her arms, Death Eater robes and all, was her old friend and classmate and that she wasn't in some absurd and terrible dream. And it _was_ absurd and terrible to find Neville Longbottom at a Death Eater meeting, but Hermione couldn't help but feel the closest she'd come to happiness in weeks.

Neville's trembling lessened slightly. "Hermione," he said.

"Why?"

There was a long moment of silence, and then: "My Gran, Hermione! I wasn't going to, but he said he'd—she'd—like my parents. I—I didn't mean—"

Hermione just held him even tighter. "I know, I know. Me too."

"How?"

"Harry."

"Is Harry—?" Neville actually let go of her to pull back and look her in the eyes. Suddenly, the terror was gone. They were wide and filled with wonder and a desperate hope. Hermione wished she knew if that hope was baseless or not.

"Yes! He's in that bathroom over there..." Hermione nodded toward the hallway where Harry's makeshift prison was just out view.

"Then we have to—"

"We couldn't if we wanted to now, Neville," Hermione said. She tried to keep her voice calm but she was sure that she heard it crack and that Neville heard it to.

Still, Neville's eyes lowered and the glint of hope that had lit up his face a moment ago faded.

"They don't mean to harm him," Hermione said. "He's a horcrux. That means that Voldemort is going to _protect_ him..."

Neville's mouth opened, but he didn't say a word. Everything within him rebelled so completely against the idea that he couldn't prepare a single argument for _why_ it was absurd, because it seemed too obvious. "Well, maybe it'll be good for us if Harry's protected," Neville said after some thought. He decided against going any farther than that. Hermione would know what he meant, and Neville was _not_ going to say anything that the Death Eaters near them could infer to be about their master's death.

"It comes at a high cost, Neville," Hermione said. "As long as Harry's alive—"

The whole room went silent as Voldemort entered.

"My friends..." Voldemort said, smiling and glancing around the room at the Death Eaters crammed onto every surface.

Neville gave Hermione a curious look, and Hermione rolled her eyes, ducking her head slightly so her hair kept it hidden from everyone but Neville. Hermione had been wondering for weeks now whom Voldemort thought he was kidding by calling them his friends. It was nice to know that it wasn't Neville, at least. When Hermione looked back up at Voldemort, he was glaring at her, but he didn't say anything to her.

"I have excellent news," Voldemort said, not taking his eyes off Hermione. "A small camp of mudbloods..."

Every eye in the room fell on Hermione.

"...Who were apparently too stupid to flee our proud pure-blood nation when we gave them the chance, were discovered last Thursday in Surrey. They were captured, of course, and promptly brought to Azkaban. Lucius did some work on them well into Friday morning, got a bit of sleep, then continued his work on those that hadn't already slipped into madness for most of Friday night..."

Hermione felt a warm rush in the back of her throat and swallowed hard to keep herself from vomiting up her dinner. There was nothing that could have prepared Hermione for this part of Death Eater meetings: The part where they discussed brutal torture as though the Death Eaters in question had just been up filling out paperwork all night. This wasn't Hermione's first time hearing such a discussion, but she was still far from numb to them. Neville was paler than he'd been a few minutes ago and _begging_ Hermione with his eyes to do _something_, but Hermione could do nothing but meet his eyes looking apologetic. He looked away to the floor.

She was nudged in the back by something and turned around to find Snape, the only half-blood who was ever allowed to sit in a chair in these meetings, raising his eyebrows at her as though she was a first-year who'd been caught giggling with her partner when they should have been brewing. Hermione bit her tongue and looked back to Voldemort. _Not because Snape raised his eyebrows at you,_ she told herself, _But because you need to stay alive. To protect Harry. And Neville._

Neville's hand slipped into hers and intertwined their fingers. They both kept their eyes on Voldemort but squeezed each other's hands for what little comfort there was there.

Voldemort nodded to Lucius. Hermione was actually grateful for this, as it got most people's eyes off her. "Thank you, Lucius, for doing such a thankless job so well." Most of the other Death Eaters raised their bottles in a toast, and Hermione was very glad not to have a bottle of her own.

Lucius held up his hands. "You're too kind, my Lord. The job does have its rewarding parts."

"I'm glad you think so," Voldemort said. "There is a wonderful future for you in torture, Lucius..." His eyes moved over to Draco. Draco moved almost unnoticeably closer to his father. "And perhaps for Draco too," Voldemort said, allowing the false note in his voice to ring very clearly. "Anything is possible."

A number of other Death Eaters chuckled.

Voldemort glanced around the group as a whole again. "Whatever personal rewards there may have been for Lucius, the rewards for our society were minimal. All ten of the mudbloods slipped into madness or died without revealing the whereabouts of any other magic thieves. But don't fear, my friends. The snatchers and the dementors are always about, and we will soon have our magical homeland."

A few of the more intoxicated Death Eaters clapped, but Voldemort's glare quickly silenced them. Voldemort asked Snape for a report on Hogwarts, and after listening for ten minutes and biting her tongue so hard she tasted her own blood, Hermione decided to sing her least favorite Celestina Warbeck song in her head until Snape stopped talking. It wasn't as effective as she'd hoped it would be. Teaching children to perform Unforgivable Curses, abolishing the house system, Death Eaters in the staff positions, no more muggleborns, horrific detentions... Hermione was actually _glad_ to have left school a year early...

When Snape and Voldemort finished a very one-sided discussion about what needed to be done at Hogwarts in the next few weeks, Voldemort had a look on his face that generally meant the meeting was over. He instructed the Lestranges to stay behind, chided Nott Sr. for not bringing Theodore and said in a rather commanding tone that he _hoped_ to see Theo at the next meeting, then finally walked over to Hermione and pulled a roll of parchment out of his robes.

Hermione took it without a word to him.

"Have it solved by Tuesday," Voldemort said.

Hermione unrolled the parchment. Even in rather small handwriting, the original equation took up the entire width of the page. Hermione recognized it immediately as alchemy, but wasn't at all sure where to go from there, even though Voldemort had been _kind_ enough to do the first three steps for her on lines immediately below. There were easily a dozen variables, and Hermione remembered enough arithmancy to know that some of them could only be solved for with yet another equation. She didn't remember any of the equations. All Hermione knew about the equation she was solving for was a hastily scribbled _water=blood_ at the top of the page. Hermione couldn't imagine what Voldemort would want to turn water into blood for, but that was hardly the most pressing question on her mind.

It didn't seem like a good idea to ask any questions at all.

Voldemort noticed the worried look on Hermione's face, but he did nothing to reassure her. As he walked away, he said, "And you _are_ allowed to go speak to Harry until I call for him. Please behave."

"I—Thank you!" Hermione said. "Neville too?"

Voldemort sighed. "_Yes,_ children. Go play. Everyone's dismissed."

Hermione and Neville didn't mind the insult in the slightest. As the other Death Eaters began to disapparate they jumped to their feet and rushed to the bathroom. The door was locked from both sides, as it turned out, but when they called Harry's name the door was quickly unlocked from his side. Hermione rushed into his arms as soon as it was open.

Harry held on to her for far longer than would probably have seemed prudent to outsiders, even rocking her slightly when he felt how she was shaking. "Where have you been staying?"

"Malfoy Manor."

"And how's that been?"

"Dreadful. And you?"

"The Lestranges'. Also dreadful." Harry sighed and let her go, then turned to Neville. "And you? What's your story?"

"I joined the Order after I left school..." Neville said, glancing around quickly, "And I _tried_, Harry. Really, I did. I—I even—" He shivered. "I killed a few of them." Without giving Harry and Hermione time to respond, he added, "Not fairly, either. They attacked the Order headquarters while I was in the _loo_ of all places..." Neville sighed and shook his head. "I had the element of surprise, at least, so I used it and got a few of them in the back..." He flinched and waited a second, but Harry and Hermione didn't say anything. "...and then I ran and barely made it out with my life. And that was it for the Order. He-who-must-not-be-named had control of everything, Dumbledore was dead, Kingsley was dead..." his lip trembled. "And then one night I woke up hearing my Gran screaming. I ran downstairs and there _he_ was and I..." Neville struggled for a long minute to find the words but couldn't. At last, he settled for rolling up his sleeve and showing Harry and Hermione the mark.

Harry let go of Hermione, turned to Neville, and opened his arms. He and Neville embraced, yet there was something cold in their embrace. They were each trying to offer the other strength that neither of them had. It was too hard to simply be glad for each other's company when they had both changed so much in just a few short years and both knew that their presence at this meeting meant horrible things.

"I don't suppose he told you what he plans to do to me...?" Harry said, looking from Neville to Hermione a few times.

They both shook their heads.

"The Lestranges didn't tell you?" Hermione said.

"I asked and they laughed. They've just been _buckets_ of useful information ever since I was brought there."

Neville craned down the hallway for a moment. "Reckon they're discussing it now?"

Harry and Hermione instantly got quiet.

"No, my lord," Rodolphus was saying. "All I mean is that I _don't know_. The boy isn't exactly welcome to climb into bed between us whenever he has a nightmare."

Bellatrix laughed. "I'd give baby Potter something to be afraid of—"

"_Bella_!" all three men said at once, Voldemort quite sharply and Rodolphus and Rabastan with more than a hint of alarm.

Harry scoffed. "As if sleeping under the same roof as _her_ isn't already something to be afraid of..."

Hermione shushed him.

"Give him a minute more with Baby Blood-Traitor and the mud..." Rodolphus cleared his throat. "..._half_-blood, then ask them. He might tell them."

"Or," Harry said, loudly enough for them to hear, "You could ask _me_ whatever you want to know about me. I'm on rather good terms with myself, you know. I tell myself everything."

Hermione moved close to Harry again and gripped his sleeve tightly. The house was quiet for a moment.

"Very well, Harry. Come here... In fact, why don't all three of you come?"

Hermione and Neville swallowed hard. Harry's heart sank and he wondered if he'd just gotten his friends into a great deal of trouble. Still, he couldn't go back now, and trying to would only make things much worse for everyone. Harry gently stepped away from Hermione grip and slipped past Neville to lead the way down the hall. If Voldemort intended to punish Hermione and Neville for eavesdropping, perhaps he'd hesitate to do so if he'd need aim around Harry. It was a very faint hope, but still a hope.

Voldemort did not hex Hermione or Neville the instant they were in view. "Sit," he said. "All of you."

Harry suppressed a shiver as he settled uncomfortably onto the middle cushion of Macnair's stained sofa. He was reminded of his position between Ron and Hermione on the bed several weeks ago. Harry could see Macnair now, huddled over a newspaper in the kitchen but obviously keeping his eyes trained on the scene in his living room. He met Harry's eyes and smirked, and for a moment Harry wouldn't have put it past the man to stick his tongue out at him. Macnair didn't, though, and Voldemort didn't seem to notice the interaction at all.

"Bella," Voldemort said, glancing at her from the corner of his eyes, "I want you to _watch_ Neville and Hermione for me. You shouldn't have any trouble doing both at once. His mind is no stronger than his parents' and hers is no better."

Bellatrix laughed. Harry saw Neville tense and had to quickly turn and grab his hand to prevent him from pouncing on them both. Neville's mouth was half open, but when he felt Harry's hand on his he remembered himself quickly enough to avoid saying anything he'd regret.

Voldemort's right eyebrow went dangerously high for a moment, but it quickly fell and a satisfied smirk appeared on his lips when he was confident that Neville was just going to take the comment.

"Let's start with your dreams, Harry..." Voldemort said. "When was the last time you dreamt about me?"

Harry shifted in his seat. That question had been rather unfortunately worded, and a the small smirk on Macnair's lips assured Harry that he wasn't the only one who thought so, but Harry had a feeling that it would not be in his best interest to say that. "Three months ago," he said.

Bellatrix eyed Neville for a second then let her eyes skim over Hermione just as quickly. She gave a very non-committal grunt and looked to her master like a schoolgirl hoping to be dismissed to recess from a very dull history lesson.

"I see..." Voldemort said. "Tell me about it. What did you see?"

"You should know," Harry said. "You were there."

"Cru—"

"You were torturing a Death Eater! I don't know who and I'm not sure why. Draco was there. That was _all_, really!"

"And you were...?"

"You."

"You were me?"

"I always am in those dreams." Harry sank back into the sofa, expecting Voldemort be terrified or furious about this revelation.

Voldemort was neither. "And can you control me?"

"No."

"Crucio!"

Neville's scream was actually the loudest in the room. Harry's torture was so short-lived that he barely got a yelp out, though Neville quickly had a tight grip on him and was demanding to know whether or not he was alright.

"Fine, Neville," Harry said. He didn't pull away.

"Would you like to try that again, Harry?"

Harry took a deep breath. Even though it had been years since he'd seen Neville, the man's scent—sweat mixed with a vague aroma of dirt and herbs (some things never change)—was familiar and calming. He'd rather 'face' Voldemort from Neville's arms, even if it meant trading off a bit of dignity.

He _hadn't_ lied, though. Or, at least, he hadn't meant to. "I... I've never tried," Harry said.

Voldemort glanced at Bellatrix. Again, he eyes flicked over Neville and Hermione in a matter of seconds. "They don't know, my lord."

"Hm... Very well," Voldemort said. He eyed Harry oddly for a moment, but pressed on before Harry could say anything about it. "And how long has the pain whenever I touch you been an issue?"

Harry shrugged. "Forever." He didn't like that look, but since Voldemort was not hexing Harry or either of his friends at the moment, he wasn't sure what to make of it or his uneasy feeling.

"_Harry..._"

"What?"

Voldemort sighed. "You need to be more specific. Did it start when I was reborn?"

"No. If it had, I would have said 'since that night in the graveyard.' It's hurt me to be near you since I was a first year... But not always consistently when I was around Quirrell... Before then I couldn't tell you. Believe it or not, I don't remember being _one_ very clearly."

Voldemort tisked him. "So _rude_, Harry. This is for your benefit as well as mine, is it not? I'd assumed that you'd find a relief from some unnecessary pain quite welcome. But no matter. Go home. I will take care of you..." He smiled wickedly. "Hermione, Neville, you two as well. Don't forget your assignment, Hermione. Narcissa may be of some help, if you're nice to her."

Hermione was speechless for a moment, but finally managed to say "Yes, master," before rising and pulling the boys into a group hug. When she stepped away, Neville followed, and they apparated out of the room together.

"Alright..." Rodolphus said, grabbing Harry by the arm and hauling him up out of his seat. "I hope you've enjoyed getting out of the house for a while. Don't expect it to happen again soon."

"On the contrary, Rodolphus..." Voldemort said, "I think Harry will be seeing me again very soon."

"You _said_ I'd be able to leave," Harry said, glaring at Voldemort.

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. "Did I? I don't believe I did."

"In the vow—"

"Ah, yes. I did prepare for that eventuality, but you needed _permission_. You do not, at the moment, have permission."

Harry tugged out of Rodolphus' grip and turned to face the man. "May I—"

"_Rodolphus_ does not have permission to give you permission, Harry," Voldemort said.

Rodolphus showed Harry his palms, but he was smirking. Rabastan, Bellatrix, and Macnair were all laughing behind Harry. Harry glared from Rodolophus to Voldemort without acknowledging the others.

"Good night!" Voldemort said.

"Good night!" Rodolphus and Rabastan said. Rodolphus grabbed Harry's shoulder and pulled him close, readying him for side-apparation.

Bellatrix dropped to her knees on the floor, took Voldemort's hand in hers, and kissed it. "Good night, my lord..." she said softly, smiling up at him.

Harry was genuinely afraid that Rodolphus' grip was going to break his shoulder. The _crack_ as he apparated away seemed to be one of the loudest and most angry that Harry had ever heard.

The instant they were back in the Lestrange's drawing room, the elf appeared and bowed deeply. Harry had wanted a chance to talk with Twoey for some time, but he was apparently under quite strict orders not to speak to Harry or even to be alone in a room with Harry. Though Harry did not pretend to be an expert on house-elf aging, he was fairly certain that Twoey was much too young to have been the Lestrange's elf before they went to Azkaban, and Harry was keenly interested to know what his history was and how he really felt about his current masters. Though the Lestranges were not what Harry would have called _kind_ to the elf, they were considerably less brutal than Harry had expected. If Bellatrix shared her sister's belief in making elves punish themselves, Twoey was either a _very_ obedient elf or limited his punishments to areas that were covered by the old towels with holes cut in the middle and sewn sides that made up his wardrobe.

Twoey was the first elf that Harry had ever noticed changing his outfit. It had come as quite a surprise to Harry when, on his forth or so day with the Lestranges, he realized that the towel the elf was wearing had changed colors. He'd made the mistake of voicing this realization, and been met with a mixture of blank and judgmental stares from the Lestranges. He'd assumed from that that elves _usually_ changed what they were wearing once every few days, but Twoey was the first elf Harry had met who actually owned different colors of things to wear. Twoey, for his part, had looked rather horrified that Harry had noticed and had immediately offered to change back into the dirty towel.

"Twoey has been keeping dinner warm for his family!" Twoey said. His large olive-colored eyes settled on Harry for a moment, and he added, "...and his family's guest!"

Rodolphus raised an eyebrow and the elf flinched. He had just come dangerously close to speaking directly to Harry. Still, it was ambiguous enough that Rodolphus let it go. As Rabastan and Bellatrix apparated into the room, Harry tried to meet Twoey's eyes, but the elf was having none of it.

"Excellent," Rodolphus said, walking toward the dinning room. Bellatrix and Rodolphus began to follow him. It wasn't unusual for Twoey to keep dinner warm for 'his family' in Harry's experience, and Bellatrix and Rabastan, at least, seemed to expect it. "What is it?"

"Duck, master."

"Good..." He stopped suddenly. Rabastan and Bellatrix stopped as well and shared a confused look. Rodolphus eyed Harry darkly. "Are you coming?"

Harry sighed. "Actually, I was hoping to just go up to my room. I'm not very hungry." He really wasn't. Between Neville being a Death Eater and overhearing far more of the Death Eater meeting than he'd ever have liked to before he thought to turn on the facet to drown out the voices, Harry's stomach was in knots.

Rodolphus raised an eyebrow. "You're not _very_ hungry, but you are hungry. Come to dinner."

Harry rolled his yes. "I'd really prefer not to." He turned and headed toward the staircase.

"_Harry,_" Rodolphus said, "I am not asking."

Harry raised his own eyebrow. "Who are you? My mother? I'm not eating." Harry began to climb the stairs without looking back at the Lestranges.

Twoey's quiet, vaguely distressed whimper was Harry's only warning, but it was enough. Harry darted up the staircase two at a time, hearing Rodolphus' boots thud behind him. Not a second after he got into his bedroom and slammed the door, there was a crash as Rodolphus ran into it behind him.

Harry collapsed onto his bed, listening to Rodolphus' swears and feeling confident for a brief moment that he'd won this round.

Then his door opened.

"You didn't _really_ think I'd let you lock yourself away from me, did you?" Rodolphus asked with a chuckle.

Harry sat up straight and gripped the headboard with his right hand.

"You are not allowed to miss meals, Harry. You have three seconds to stand up before I _drag_ you down to the table and _force_ the duck down your throat."

Harry looked Rodolphus over carefully. He was quite recovered form his stay in Azkaban and rather muscular. Harry was nowhere near recovered from a year in the woods. Rodolphus could follow through with his threat, if Harry pushed him.

Harry swallowed hard. "Fuck you. I'm _allowed_ to miss whatever I want."

Rodolphus shrugged and calmly approached Harry with a blank face. Harry's grip tightened. He realized how very poor both of his handholds were just as Rodolphus grabbed his right bicep, and made a quick decision to try something else. He rotated as much as he could and kicked Rodolphus in the stomach. It couldn't actually have been very painful, mostly because Harry _wasn't_nearly as strong as Rodolphus, but it knocked Rodolphus off him, at least.

"You fucking _bitch_!" Rodolphus swung his wand in a quick slashing motion and a deep cut appeared from just below Harry's left ear to his collarbone.

Harry doubled over on the bed, clutching at the cut swearing. When he heard his door slam, he had a feeling he wouldn't be able to open it for quite some time. Harry searched his memory for healing charms but, whether it was because the stinging was preventing him from focusing or simply because he didn't know any, he wasn't able to remember any. Harry sighed and walked into the bathroom attached to his bedroom. He searched for something to clean and bandage the cut with, but was hardly surprised when he didn't find anything. The Lestranges, no doubt, _did_ know how to do these things with magic. Harry settled for wetting a washcloth. At first he tried to actually clean the cut with a bit of soap, but he quickly resigned himself to the fact that the blood was flowing too steadily for him to do so right then and collapsed on his bed again, now with the damp washcloth over the cut. He lied there in boredom for a long minute until his hand wandered to his prick, as it was want to do whenever Harry found himself lying in bed with nothing to do and no intention of sleeping. When Harry had first started going though puberty, he'd made good use of his aunt and uncle's determination to ignore him at all costs.

Since Harry had arrived at the Lestranges with no clothes but those on his back, and those had vanished the first time Harry took them off, never to be seen again, Harry was wearing hand-me-downs from Rabastan that had probably been stylish in the 70s. In any case, they seem to have been practically designed to provide easy access to the prick. When even your _clothing_ is begging you to wank, it's hard to say no.

Besides, seeing Neville reminded Harry of Dean and Seamus, and the time he'd walked in on them, and that alone was enough to get Harry to harden slightly. He felt someone guilty about it, since he'd promised the pair a million times that the incident didn't have to be _weird_, and this was definitely making it weird, but Harry often pictured his old dorm mates when he wanked and the memory of Ginny's naked body or Cho's bare chest (he could certainly _imagine_ the rest) just wasn't doing it for him.

Harry's prick was out of his pants before he really noticed what he was doing, and he began to tease himself a bit, closing his eyes and trying to put himself back in the moment. Seamus' longish curls and sweaty limbs, Deans slender body and deep moans... soon enough Harry's prick was slick enough with precum for him to him to set a good pace wanking himself... Seamus' cock buried in Dean's arse, Dean's hands in Seamus' hair as he pulled him into a deep kiss... Seamus' hands around Dean's cock...

It occurred to Harry suddenly that his hands were moving, quite literally, automatically. He stopped his wanking immediately, and suddenly his hand, and indeed his entire body, felt rather unstable, as though it was receiving signals from two different brains. Harry did _not_ tell his hand to begin wanking him again, but he experimentally relaxed his muscles and relinquished control over it. It dropped to the bed and remained there for a moment, then of its own free will moved back over to Harry's prick and began wanking him, at first very slowly and experimentally.

A feeling that Harry knew wasn't quite his own told him that it would stop if he said he wanted it to or if he just _stopped_ it.

Harry realized what was happening. He realized that he should stop it, immediately.

He realized he didn't want to. He moaned and shook his head slightly.

The hand began to wank Harry considerably faster than Harry generally wanked himself. Harry's left hand, also quite out of Harry's control, slipped under Harry's shirt and began to tease Harry's nipple. Harry's body squirmed and bucked as his hands teased him, but Harry himself intentionally remained out of control of his actions. A twisted fantasy he didn't realize he'd had was playing out, and Harry just laid back and allowed himself to be pleasured. When he finally shot his load all over his hand, his pants, his robes, and even his blankets, his fingers stilled for a moment on his nipple, then scratched quite brutally. Harry yelped, but he was scarcely through with the yelp when he found himself, and yet not himself, chuckling. His cum-covered hand rose to his mouth and Harry didn't stop himself from licking his own fluid off his hands. The bitter liquid stayed in his mouth for a moment before he swallowed.

"Hm..." Harry heard himself say. His left hand slipped out from under his shirt, lifted the bloody rag off of his neck, and held it above his head for a moment. Harry felt his own eyebrows raise, but no sound broke from his lips.

Harry's hand dropped the rag, and Harry sat up, suddenly the sole person in control of his body. Harry glanced around the room nervously, but he knew that if that little... _thing_... was over, it was over. He was alone now, with his suddenly very mixed feelings. He'd just... It had practically been... Yet he _could_ have stopped it.

He pulled off his soiled clothes, making a mental note to apologize to Twoey for them if and when he got the chance, and then he tossed the bloody rag onto them, glad to see he wasn't bleeding anymore, and settled into a fitful sleep on the first clean part of the bed he found.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Last Chance  
><span>Author:<span> Dragon_of_Venus  
><span>Pairings:<span> Voldemort/Harry  
><span>Rating (Fic):<span> NC-17  
><span>Rating (Chapter):<span> NC-17  
><span>Word-Count (Fic):<span> 35,000-40,000  
><span>Word-Count (Chapter):<span> 7,158  
><span>Master List:<span> Here.  
><span>Summary:<span> AU after Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort is in control of the wizarding world. Harry is captured and placed under Voldemort's protection because of the horcrux.  
><span>Warnings (Fic):<span> Discussions of rape, graphic attempted rape (not in the main pairing), suicide, character death, slurs, sexual harassment, abductions, history of violence within the main pairing, mentions of hate crimes and torture.  
><span>Warnings (Chapter):<span> Violence, sadomasochism, torture, trama-bonding  
><span>Contains:<span> Consensual sex between adults, masturbation, voyerism, Voldemort-wins AU.  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> Harry Potter and all related characters, settings, and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling, not to me. Receive no money for writing this or any other Harry Potter related piece.

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><p>Harry woke up no fewer than five times that night from rolling onto his cut side. In the morning, his pillow was bloody and his neck stung terribly. He felt only slightly better after a shower. Thankfully, the first of December was rather cold, so Harry had an excuse to put on one of the thicker turtleneck robes he'd inherited from Rabastan. It was long enough to hide most of the cut, lest Rodolphus see it and remember how angry he'd been with Harry the night before and why, and it provided a very small amount of cushion between the delicate wound and the rest of the world, without irritating the cut too much in its own right. It was also of a maroon color that Harry hoped blood wouldn't be as noticeable on or difficult to wash out of. He'd given Twoey enough trouble as it was, after all.<p>

He wasn't locked in his room. That was an incredible relief. Still, his heart sped up a bit and he was glad to get to the bottom of the stairs without seeing Rodolphus. He walked into the dining room at nine in the morning, the usual time to eat breakfast, and sat down in his usual seat, as far away from all of the Lestranges as he could get without leaving the table.

"Will you pass the—"

A bowl of Brussels sprouts appeared in front of him.

"Eat all of them," Rodolphus said firmly. "You don't want to know what you're getting for lunch if you don't."

Harry bit down his moan and picked up his fork. There must have been a dozen or so in the bowl, at least, and Harry could taste their bitterness just thinking about it. Still, he _was_ hungry, he didn't want to anger Rodolphus any more than he already had, and he really didn't want to see what they'd try to make him eat if he refused. He _would_ have to eat some time, and it might as well be now, when the hole he'd dug himself into wasn't terribly deep. He tried to look nonchalant as he chewed, but he had always _despised_ Brussels sprouts, and by the time he was on the third one his resolve to keep that from showing on his face was gone.

Bellatrix laughed, taking a very showy bite of her own eggs to taunt Harry. Once she'd chewed, she smiled. "Aw, does little baby Potter not want to eat his vegetables?"

Harry ate another sprout without responding. Bellatrix's insults were almost a broken record after enough time. It wasn't that difficult to ignore them.

"What? Doesn't your _mommy_ ever make you eat your vegetables? Oh, wait. I'm _so_ sorry..."

Harry swallowed his brief flash of rage along with his sprout. Somehow, he made it through breakfast without hexing Bellatrix, though her insults continued sporadically through the meal. Her 'sense of humor' was very close to Draco's, and though Harry would have knocked Draco across the Quidditch Pitch for that five years ago, that would have been under entirely different circumstances, before the war, when Harry thought that little things like Slytherins being bullies actually _mattered_. Now Harry mostly just wished that bullying orphans was _all_ Bellatrix Lestrange had ever done.

Rodolphus and Rabastan were quiet until Harry left. Harry noticed Rodolphus' eyes on his neck a few times, but Rodolphus obviously couldn't see anything beneath Harry's robes. He looked at Harry and opened his mouth to speak several times, but every time he changed his mind.

When Harry returned to his room, he found his soiled clothes gone and his entire bed-set changed. The new sheets and blankets smelled freshly washed and were various shades of brown that Harry liked far more than the cream-colored set he'd traded for them. Harry collapsed onto the bed and instantly regretted it when his cut was again harshly ripped open. He held his robes to it until the stinging subsided, then walked into the bathroom to look. Although there was a clear line of slightly darker red on the clothes, Harry didn't think it would be terribly noticeable to anyone not looking for it. When he flipped the collar down, he found that the cut was a rather angry red color and there was smeared blood around most of it, but it wasn't in terrible shape. Harry flipped his collar back up and returned to his bed, this time sitting down a bit more carefully.

Terribly clear memories from last night circled Harry's thoughts. He had very mixed feeling about what had happened. Why hadn't he told Voldemort to stop? In fact, not only had he not told Voldemort to stop, he'd shook his head. He'd actually told Voldemort _not_ to stop. Was he_that_ desperate for a quick hand-job? It wasn't even as though Voldemort had done anything that Harry wouldn't have been able to do himself.

_Shit._ How was he even going to look at Voldemort ever again? Voldemort had told Rodolphus that he and Harry would be seeing each other again soon. What had _Voldemort_ made of that? Would he mock Harry brutally the next time they saw each other? Probably. Would he take it as some kind of surrender? Harry wouldn't blame him. He _had_ betrayed so many of his principles last night. Would he... try something more?

Harry didn't know. Harry wasn't even sure how he'd react if Voldemort did try something more. On one hand, Harry _had_ enjoyed himself last night. And maybe, especially if Voldemort took Harry's willingness to sleep for him for willingness to submit in general, Harry could gain a bit more freedom and a ticket out of Lestrange Manor by offering Voldemort some pleasure of his own. It was a relatively small price to pay for not having to put up with Bellatrix Lestrange any more. On the other hand, Voldemort had killed Harry's parents. That was a pretty big mood killer, and one that was fairly difficult to forget about. Harry's pride was rebelling against the idea of using sex to get into Voldemort's good graces, as well. Surely the moral implications of fucking the Dark Lord were just more _important_ than whether or not Harry would have to spend any more time listening to Bellatrix mock him.

Harry couldn't do it. It had been wrong to do it last night, and if Voldemort mocked Harry for it, it would be the least Harry deserved. He certainly couldn't do any _more_ than that. He doubted even _Neville_ would stoop that low just to get out of the Lestrange's house, and Neville would have far more reason than Harry to _want_ out.

...Poor Neville. It was still utterly surreal to think that he was a Death Eater now. And _Hermione_...

There was a soft knock at the door.

Harry stood up and moved toward the door slowly, not quite sure if he should expect more of Bellatrix's jeers or Rodolphus' sorry glances, or something else entirely. Rabastan had hardly said five words to him the entire time he'd been staying with the Lestranges.

It was Rabastan.

"The Dark Lord wants to see you at the Ministry," he said. He grabbed Harry and side-apparated him into Voldemort's office without another word. He left just as quickly.

_Well, that's fifteen words..._

Harry looked around the Minister's office. It was a large room filled with comfortable chairs. The carpet was thick and dark green, to match the chairs. The large oak desk seemed so imposing that Harry was actually a bit relieved to find that Voldemort wasn't sitting behind the desk. He was settled into one of the chairs not far from where Harry stood, sipping coffee and smirking at Harry.

"Sit," Voldemort said, nodding to the chair across from him. Harry obeyed, but he found it rather disconcerting that Voldemort's eyes wouldn't quite meet his. They were fixed quite sternly on Harry's neck, and the line of blood on his collar that seemed much more noticeable now than it had a few minutes ago.

"What happened?" Voldemort said, his jaw set and his eyebrow arched dangerously.

"What?" Harry said, desperately hoping that Voldemort would just let it go.

With a single wave of Voldemort's wandless hand, Harry's collar was being tugged down brutally and fresh stingers were clawing their way up the cut on Harry's neck.

"_What happened?_"

"Rodolphus Lestrange!" Harry said.

The stinging didn't stop.

"Keep talking," Voldemort said. His glare didn't soften. "I want a verb, a direct object, and a subordinating clause beginning with 'because.'"

Harry wasn't entirely certain was a direct object _was_, but he didn't think it would be in his own best interest to ask. He said "...cast a slicing hex on me because I kicked him and swore at him when he tried to _physically drag_ me to dinner last night," and hoped it was enough.

The stinging stopped. "Who won that fight?" Harry was actually surprised that he couldn't find any trace of a laugh in the question. Still, there wasn't concern there either. It was idle curiosity, if anything, that seemed to have prompted Voldemort to ask the question.

Harry shrugged. "How are we defining 'won'? I was in pain for a lot longer than he was."

"Did you eat dinner last night?"

The look on Voldemort's face changed suddenly, and Harry became very concerned that he'd offered a bit too much information earlier.

Harry swallowed hard. "No."

Voldemort raised his wand. Harry flinched, and half a second later a strange tingling spread though Harry's cut. Harry slapped his hand to it, expecting a rush of pain at any moment, but none came. Instead, the gash healed beneath Harry's fingers.

"The Lestranges are not allowed to hurt you," Voldemort said.

Harry sighed and lowered his hand. He fixed his collar quickly.

"Crucio."

Harry instinctively curled into the fetal position in his chair, bucking and screaming in a frantic attempt to shake off the pain, but it was useless. It wasn't a long punishment, by Voldemort's standards, but it was certainly long enough. When the curse ended Harry remained where he was for a few seconds, panting and terrified that if he sat up to look at Voldemort, he'd be cursed again.

"Get up here, Harry," Voldemort said with a sigh. "We're done now. I won't curse you again unless behave badly again."

Harry sat up, if no other reason than because he knew that staying where he was _would_ be 'behaving badly' according to Voldemort, and would_guarantee_ that he was cursed again.

"_You_ are not allowed to miss meals."

"You know, that seemed pretty clear to me after Rodolphus slit my throat yesterday and decided to send me to bed without desert today."

"_Rodolphus_ had no right to make that clear. His orders were to come to me if you gave him trouble. I'll be having a discussion with _him_ as well later."

Harry flinched. Even if Rodolphus left his 'discussion' with Voldemort too afraid to physically hurt Harry, Harry was sure that his foreseeable future with the Lestranges was not going to be pleasant. If he'd known refusing was going to create this many problems, he'd have just eaten the damn duck.

"Do you understand _me_, Harry?"

Harry sighed. "If I didn't have to eat _with them_, maybe—"

"Cru—"

"No!" Harry said, jumping in his seat slightly. He was relieved, but not entirely surprised, when Voldemort lowered his wand. He'd said the curse noticeably more slowly than he usually did, and Harry could only assume that had been so that Harry would have time to repent before it was cast. "No, please, I..." He took a deep breath and held up his hands in surrender. "I'll eat with them."

"And you will _not_ challenge my orders. Do you understand?"

Harry gasped as a stinging hex hit his arm. He bit his tongue to hold in a few swear words, then let out a grudging "Yes." The stinging hex had been gentle even for a stinging hex, though. Harry's arm didn't swell, and the pain stopped completely within seconds.

"Good," Voldemort said. "Now, onto more important matters. I summoned you because we need to do something about that scar of yours..."

"You can't," Harry said.

Voldemort's eyebrows arched. He leaned forward slightly and for the first time that day Voldemort's evil red eyes met Harry's soft green eyes.

Harry shrunk back in his seat. "Let me reword that..."

Voldemort nodded. "I think that would be wise."

"I... er... What I meant was... It's not possible...?"

Voldemort looked unimpressed.

"It _is_ impossible," Harry said again, trying to make it sound less like a hopeful suggestion and more like the statement of fact that he knew it was.

Voldemort's eyebrows lowered. "Who told you that?"

"Dumbledore," Harry said. When Voldemort didn't answer him right away, he became half afraid that even speaking Dumbledore's name was now considered horrible blasphemy and he was going to be hexed for it.

Voldemort actually chuckled slightly. "Ah," he said, rising and walking over to Harry. "Dumbledore lied." Voldemort traced Harry's scar with his wand. The pain was tolerable, though not pleasant, and Harry managed to remind himself just in time that it would go very badly for him if he pulled away. "The trouble is that you haven't been properly solidified. It hasn't accepted you as its host, so it wants to break out of you whenever I'm near."

"It's welcome to _get_ out of me whenever it wants. I hope it doesn't think _I'm_ stopping it."

Voldemort ignored him.

_Solidified_. It was a harmless enough word, but the mere fact that it ivolved the horcrux had Harry bracing himself for incredible pain. Still, something in the back of Harry's mind clung to a small bit of hope. It _bothered_ Voldemort that Harry's scar hurt. Theoretically, if 'solidifying' Harry worked, it would mean considerably _less_ pain for Harry in the long run.

"How do I do it?"

"Hm?" Voldemort said. Then he seemed to realize what Harry meant. "_You_ don't do anything but hold very still. _I_ solidify you."

That made Harry considerably more nervous. It did not seem like a good idea to trust his mind to the most mental man he knew.

Harry looked over at Voldemort. He didn't have much choice.

"Alright then..." Harry said, flinching to hear his voice crack slightly. "How will _you_ do it?"

"Oh," Voldemort said, "It's really quite simple. I'm just going to formally cast the spell on you. How badly does this hurt?" He reached toward Harry's face, but something more pressing occurred to Harry and he pulled back before Voldemort reached him.

"Wait!"

Voldemort's hand stilled, but he glared at Harry.

"This won't—It won't _possess_ me once we're, er, solidified, will it? Like the diary tried to possess Ginny?"

"It doesn't matter," Voldemort said. He took another step toward Harry and raised his wand.

Harry jumped out of his chair. "It matters a great deal to _me_." He let his hand inch toward his wand, but he didn't grab it. It would be rather useless, here and now, in any case.

Voldemort sighed. "It shouldn't. Sit down."

"Why not?"

"_Sit down_, Harry. I will not ask you again."

Harry watched a dark glint cross Voldemort's eyes and was keenly aware that there was nothing stopping Voldemort from stunning Harry and casting the spell anyway, then torturing Harry when he woke. Harry sat back down.

"Nothing like that has ever happened to Nagini," Voldemort said.

"Nagini isn't human."

"Neither is the diary. It was _designed_ to be able to possess people. I had to put very specific spells with very specific parameters on it to enable it to do that, and there are reasons why I never did so again. I will be very surprised if the horcrux in you can do even _half_ of what I designed the diary to do. That's a lot of spells for my body to have been casting, without my consent, as I was _dying_, Harry. _Now_, how badly does this hurt?" The tip of his finger wasn't even completely touching Harry when a sharp pain flared through Harry's head. By the time the wand actually made contact with Harry's face, it was unbearable. He pulled away from Voldemort and ducked his head into his arms, screaming every swearword he knew.

When his swears started to slow down, he heard Voldemort sigh. "Stupify."

His eyes opened slowly. He was lying on his side in Voldemort's office, on the floor by the window. There was warm sunlight on his back and cool fingers that were connected to a body behind Harry, out of his view, caressed his skin and ran through his hair.

"Come on..." a soft voice said.

Harry shifted to a more comfortable position and stretched his legs. The hand left his hair so that it wouldn't get tangled up in it when Harry moved, then returned to it. "So far, so good... How are you feeling, Harry?"

Harry's heart dropped. Voldemort had stunned him. He'd just spent god-knows-how-long lying unconscious on Voldemort's office floor, and he'd woken up with Voldemort touching him.

And he was okay. He was alive, he was himself, and for the first time in his life Voldemort was touching him and he was _not_ in pain. He glanced down at himself and found all his limbs completely in place and not even bloody. He was overcome by a sense of relief so strong that he actually audibly sighed and physically relaxed.

Voldemort raised an eyebrow.

"A little dizzy," Harry said. "Stiff."

"That's quite understandable." The fingers left his hair, and a single finger began to trace Harry's scar. "I take it this doesn't hurt very much...?"

"Hm?" Harry rolled over.

Voldemort paused for a moment, then touched a long, pale finger to Harry's scar for the second time. He was sitting on the floor rather ungracefully, cross-legged, looking pensively at Harry.

"No," Harry said. "Not at all."

"Good," Voldemort said, rising to his feet. "You ought to be properly solidified now."

"I'm still me, too..." Harry said, standing. "That's a relief..."

"Yes, I don't know what I would do if my reckless horcrux was replaced by someone more responsible—"

"And infinitely more likely to try to usurp you," Harry said.

Voldemort stopped speaking immediately. He looked at Harry oddly for a moment, and Harry braced himself for yet another curse, or at least another hex, but none came. Instead, Voldemort laughed. "You're right, actually, though I still can't pretend you were a first choice."

"That's alright," Harry said. "You weren't either."

Voldemort looked at Harry with a face that was blank other than his raised eyebrow. He knew what Harry was referring to, of course, but he didn't see any reason why they should discuss that. It was what it was. It wouldn't happen again. Let it be.

Harry did. He flinched when Voldemort grabbed him, and again was overcome with a huge rush of relief when he was painlessly side-apparated back to the Lestranges. He felt mostly glad to be done with Voldemort, hopefully for the foreseeable future. Voldemort left Harry in the Lestrange's sitting room and immediately set out to find Rodolphus. Harry collapsed into the nearest chair without the slightest idea of what to do with himself for the rest of his life. The Lestranges had a full Quidditch Pitch, which Harry had been allowed to use several times, but he didn't think this was the best day to ask, particularly since Bellatrix and Rabastan would presumably know it was a bad sign that their master had suddenly requested to see Rodolphus.

_Maybe he'll remember that he brought it on himself..._ Harry thought hopefully. Unlikely. When had Bellatrix Lestrange ever been well regarded for her reasoning skills? Still, Harry hadn't _made_ Rodolphus hurt him, and at the very least Voldemort would want to see to it that Rodolphus didn't hurt him _again_ so the worst the Lestranges would be able to do was make him uncomfortable and feed him dog food for the next few days.

He wished he had something to work on.

He wished he could go horcrux hunting.

It occurred to him suddenly that he'd have to test his boundaries at _some point_, because until he knew exactly what his vow to Voldemort would do to him if he disobeyed, he was seriously disadvantaged in his attempts to find ways around it. There was probably no better time to begin to test his limits than when his captors were keeping each other occupied.

What had the vow been? He was not allowed to endanger his own life. Contrary to popular belief, Harry had absolutely no _desire_ to endanger his own life. That was perhaps not the best one to begin with. He would never seriously entertain thoughts of killing Voldemort. _That_ Harry wanted to do a great deal. He tried for a moment to imagine any manner of ways in which he could kill Voldemort, from casting the killing curse on him to simply knifing the bastard in his sleep—It'd be the very least he deserved—but none of them seemed to do _anything_ that Harry was aware of. The third point of the vow had been that Harry was not allowed to leave without Rodolphus' permission. There was nothing Harry wanted more at that moment than to get away from Lestrange Manor, and if he was going to suffer horribly for breaking the vow, it seemed only practical to do so around friends.

Harry glanced at the fireplace and listened closely for a long while for the sound of Bellatrix or Rabastan coming down the stairs. He heard nothing. He swallowed hard, grabbed a pinch of floo powder, and threw it into the fireplace. "The Burrow!" he said as he stepped into the flames.

He was screaming by the time he spilled out of the fireplace onto the Weasley's living room floor. An intense pressure was surrounding his body. It felt as though his skull had collapsed, his ribs had all been snapped, and most of his bones turned to dust, and still the intense pressure didn't relent. Harry's body throbbed. His chest stung. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. He _could_ breathe, but his throat burned with every breath. Mrs. Weasley rushed into the room and was on the floor holding him and casting counter-curses on him in a moment, but Harry was only very vaguely aware of her.

It wasn't until most of the pain stopped that Harry really took notice of anything outside of his own body, beginning with the cold white hand on his shoulder. Harry took in a few more painful breaths and looked up at the furious red eyes above him. Some small part of his brain that still had a sense of what was best for him told him that he should probably apologize, and he managed to pathetically mouth, "I'm sorry," before Voldemort's hand dug harshly into his shirt collar and he was disapparated away.

When they reached their destination, Voldemort as much as threw Harry toward the floor, but Harry managed to keep his footing. He looked around quickly and noticed that they were _not_ back in Voldemort's office, but rather in what Harry could only assume was Voldemort's bedroom. It was a very plain room with mostly unadorned wood furnishing. The floor was hard-wood and there wasn't a rug in sight. The bed set and the blanket were a solid charcoal color. There was only one door, and it was open and seemed to lead to a bathroom. Three large windows looked out over splendid gardens that were unseasonably vibrant and colorful. The room was clean, at the very least, and that was a considerable step up from being held in Macnair's bathroom.

_"Back sssso ssssooon, massster?"_ Nagini said. Harry turned to find her sunbathing in the window.

_"I won't be ssstaying for long."_ Voldemort said.

_"You brought lunch."_

Harry looked at Voldemort. His hands were empty.

_"Not lunch,"_ Voldemort said firmly. _"A new friend. The elf will bring you lunch later."_

Nagini moved toward Harry and Harry backed clear to the wall and tried to make it look casual. He wasn't any more frightened of Nagini than he was of Voldemort or any of Voldemort's other 'friends,' but he certainly did _not_ want to be her 'friend.'

Nagini just kept slithering toward him until she had him cornered. Harry watched as her tongue darted out a few times, coming within centimeters of touching him but never actually touching him.

_"I don't want to be hisss friend,"_ Nagini said. _"He sssmells like fear and mudblood."_

_"I don't particularly want to be yours either,"_ Harry said. _"Where does a snake learn a word like 'mud-blood'?"_

The snake raised her long neck until she was almost as tall as Harry. Her tongue darted out again, this time coming closer than Harry would care to have it to his _face_ rather than his ankles. Harry suppressed a shiver that he told himself was from the chill in the room.

_"Your acccccccent isss terrible,"_ she said.

Harry laughed.

She bared her fangs.

_"Calm down, Nagini," Voldemort hissed quickly. He switched back to English when he turned to Harry. "She doesn't particularly like that noise, Harry," Voldemort said. "You probably shouldn't make it very often."_

Harry rolled his eyes. "What am I doing here?"

"You're _staying_ here for the next twenty-four hours or so." His eyes sharpened as Harry's mouth opened. "Don't argue. _Luckily_ for you, I'm in a very lenient mood right now, so we'll pretend that the effects of the spell were punishment enough for you little trip, but I am not giving you a chance to run from me so soon after I had to fetch you. Stay here, be good, and _maybe_ I'll let you go back to Rodolphus tomorrow night." He gave Harry a final sharp look, then turned back to Nagini. _"Lunch will be here for both of you in a little while."_ Then he disapparated.

Lunch was not Brussels sprouts, and after the day Harry had had that alone was almost enough to make him happy, so he'd climbed up onto Voldemort's bed and been almost happy as he ate his turkey sandwich. Voldemort's bed, facing the headboard, would not have been his first choice of places to have lunch, but Nagini's lunch was a live rabbit, and she'd advised that Harry stay out of her way. Harry had gladly obliged.

He'd resisted the urge to turn when the rabbit _screamed_ ('squealed' was much too soft a word for it) for thirty seconds straight. He hadn't been able to bring himself to eat until the a little while after the screaming stopped, however.

_"Ssstop judging,"_ Nagini said. _"Your food wasss alive onccce too."_

_"I guess,"_ Harry said. He was suddenly very disinterested in the turkey, and instead contented himself to eat his vegetables and his apple. Nagini ate quietly. When he was finished eating, he continued to stare at the headboard for a few minutes before he worked up the courage to turn around. The rabbit's legs were still outside of Nagini's mouth, and Harry couldn't help the disgusted look that he gave her as he sat his plate, still with around a forth of a sandwich, on the dresser.

She finished her meal and looked at him. _"If you have a problem with it at dinner,__**you**__can offer to be dinner inssstead."_

_"I don't think Voldemort would allow that,"_ Harry said. He wasn't really sure he liked rabbits _that_ much.

The rest of the day went by painfully slowly. Harry couldn't find so much as a deck of cards anywhere in the room. At his most desperate, Harry had even checked Voldemort's bookcases, only to find them full of Dark Arts and Genealogy books and _very_ little else. Harry spent the better part of an hour trying to remember the lyrics to every Weird Sisters song ever written, just to keep him occupied. There was a bathroom attached to the room that Harry made liberal use of, if only for the excuse to get away from Nagini for a few minutes every hour or so. It was almost a _relief_to see Voldemort apparate into the room.

_"Hello,"_ Voldemort said, taking off his traveler's robe and tossing it carelessly over the back of a chair. _"How wasss your day? Did you two play well together?"_

_"The mud-blood couldn't ssstomach the sssight of me eating lunch,"_ Nagini said. _"He faccced away from me. He wasss quite rude."_

_"I'm not a mud-blood!"_ Harry said.

_"What do you care?"_ Voldemort said. _"You love mud-bloodsss."_

_"I'm just not one! ...and that word is a slur."_

_"You usssed it."_

"I shouldn't have."

Voldemort chuckled. Nagini hissed slightly, but Voldemort said nothing to her. "I'm sure you shouldn't have. So, Harry, you didn't enjoy Nagini's company?"

Harry shrugged. "Is it always so _loud_ when she kills things?"

"Have you ever been poisoned to death?"

"I can't say I have. Or that it's something I would care to try."

"Good. Neither have I, but I'm told it's quite painful. I don't begrudge Nagini's meals a few seconds of crying." Voldemort walked over to his dresser and threw down a sheet of parchment covered in arithmancy. "Your friend did better with her first task than I expected she would," Voldemort said. "Of course, I haven't thoroughly looked her work over yet, but everything was looking wonderful when I glanced at it earlier."

"That's Hermione for you," Harry said, nodding slightly. He didn't like hearing Voldemort talk about her. Something about that was just completely_wrong_.

"I'll be advancing her to spell creation very soon."

"And then will she and I be allowed to see each other?"

Voldemort smiled. Harry had to consciously remind himself that, in this situation, that smile probably did not mean that he was about to die. "We'll see." He looked over at Harry's plate and frowned. "You didn't finish your lunch."

"But I _ate_ it!" Harry said, backing away from Voldemort slightly. "Most of it, anyway. You said I wasn't allowed to miss meals, not that I was required to eat every bite of them. I _didn't_ miss lunch, even though I spent half of it listening to a rabbit die and—"

"You are not in trouble, Harry."

Harry let out a breath and relaxed. He felt himself blush, and he wasn't entirely certain why.

Voldemort shook his head and chuckled.

For hours, Harry let a battle wage within him about whether or not to go to bed. On one hand, going to bed meant falling asleep and, with luck, being unconscious for the entire remainder of the night and _at least_ most of the morning. Harry supposed he'd be woken up for meals, but maybe he'd be allowed to take them and go back to bed. There was no reason for Voldemort to object to Harry sleeping too much. It wasn't like sleeping put Harry's life in danger.

On the other hand, sleeping meant being unconscious near Voldemort.

Still, Harry came to a point where his eyes were so heavy he couldn't resist going to bed anymore.

"Where am I sleeping?" he asked.

Voldemort didn't even look up from his pile of papers and books. "I would recommend the bed, but if you'd like to join Nagini on the floor by the fire, I won't stop you."

"_Your_ bed?"

"There aren't any others in the room."

"But—"

Voldemort sighed. "Oh, Harry. If I wanted a scrawny teenage lover, I'd write to Lucius about it and have Draco Malfoy chained to my bed in less than an hour, quite calm and willing... Well, calm _enough_, anyway... I would _not_ waste time and energy wooing my _least_ favorite little boy in the world."

"My concern is more that you _wouldn't_ waste the time and energy wooing me."

Voldemort's snake-like eyes widened for a moment, but returned to normal so quickly that Harry almost doubted he'd really seen them widen. "That would be rather unsatisfying in light of the many other, far more public, ways that I can strip you of power and humiliate you, wouldn't it?"

"I think it would be rather unsatisfying even without those. I want to know what _you_ think."

"I have no intention of raping you, Harry," Voldemort said. Harry believed him. He could sense nothing but exhaustion and vague irritation through their link. "Undress, shower, and _sleep_. I won't bother you."

The command triggered a dark, almost pleasant tingle. Harry brushed it off, undressed quickly, and stood there for a moment, fully exposed before the Dark Lord. Voldemort's eyes were back on Hermione's parchment, and he didn't even glance over at Harry to make sure he was doing anything. Harry sighed, left his clothes in a pile on the floor, and headed for the bathroom.

His sense of relief was very short lived. As he was adjusting the water in Voldemort's shower, it occurred to him that Voldemort may have just wanted to finish reading over Hermione's work before raping him, or that Voldemort may have been serious about not raping Harry when he said it, but would begin to think about Harry's naked body and change his mind in a minute.

Harry adjusted the water to as cold as he could stand it. If he was lucky, Voldemort was cold-blooded by now.

But Voldemort was true to his word. He didn't bother Harry at all during Harry's freezing and miserable shower, and when Harry stepped back into the bedroom, Voldemort was carefully eyeing a vial of clear liquid. He took a long sip, looked thoughtful for a moment, and then swallowed. He didn't even glance at Harry.

Harry climbed into bed with his heart racing, again feeling that odd, dark tingling. As he pulled the covers down, he realized that in a twisted way he _wanted_ Voldemort's attention. He was again feeling safe in a way that he knew he shouldn't as the reality slowly set in that Voldemort now had a vested interest in _protecting_ him and really did have no apparent desire to rape him, but still on some emotional level Voldemort was registering as dangerous. Harry was flirting with that danger and it was giving him a surreal high. He was naked in Voldemort's bed, and he was_safe_. He wanted to know if he could go father, deeper, and still be safe and incomplete control, completely able to stop things a second before he drowned.

He fingered his prick. Voldemort didn't appear to notice at first, so he made a point of moaning. It was fake but audible, and it got Voldemort's attention. Harry felt Voldemort's irritation through the link and had to bite down a whimper that wasn't at all fake. He waited to see if Voldemort would reach for his want, but Voldemort didn't.

"Is wanking part of your nightly routine, or does being held prisoner just get you hard?"

Harry smiled sheepishly. "Not _always_." He wanked slowly, feeling Voldemort's irritation grow with every small movement of his hand around his prick. His head was spinning. He wanted more. He wanted Voldemort to come over to him.

He had fucking lost it.

"_Harry_," Voldemort said, "You could, at the _absolute least_ go back to the bathroom and do that."

Harry sighed. Voldemort wasn't going to come over here unless he—He was not going to ask.

He was going to go to Voldemort.

He didn't give himself time to question the decision, once he'd made it. He climbed off the bed and walked over to Voldemort, stark naked and with his right hand soiled with his own pre-cum. When he finally got to Voldemort, he stood there awkwardly for a second. He wasn't quite sure how to express to Voldemort what he wanted, in part because he wasn't exactly sure _what_ he wanted.

Voldemort looked at him with a blank face. "Are you feeling alright, Potter?"

"No," Harry said, laughing slightly. He brought his clean hand up to the top button of Voldemort's robes, undid it, then paused and looked at Voldemort with wide eyes.

Voldemort laughed. "_Now_ who isn't wasting time or energy on wooing?"

Harry opened his mouth, but then realized that a snarky answer would be counter-productive. He closed his mouth quickly and kneeled before Voldemort and continued to stare up at him.

Voldemort smirked. "What do you want?"

Harry raised his eyebrows. Was that not _painfully_ obvious?

"You're not getting it unless you say it."

Something in the tone of Voldemort's voice made Harry suddenly very sure that Voldemort had done this before. Maybe not recently, but certainly at some point. And Harry never had. And he wasn't really sure exactly how far he wanted to go, or how different his limits might be from those of whichever Death Eater Voldemort had learned to do this with. This was probably a bad idea.

After several seconds of waiting, Voldemort returned to his notes.

Harry sighed. "Fuck me. Hurt me. Don't hurt me. I don't know. Do _something_. _Please_."

Voldemort looked very unimpressed, but when his eyes met Harry's, they softened. He sighed. "From you, that's good enough, _this time_. Stand."

Harry obeyed as quickly as he could on trembling legs and arms.

Voldemort looked him over carefully once, then smiled. "Back onto the bed, Harry."

Harry swallowed. He felt like a child who'd gone to dip his toes into the pool and found himself suddenly pushed into the deep end. By the lifeguard. And Harry _still_ didn't know how to swim.

He climbed onto the bed and immediately turned around to face Voldemort. Voldemort finished disrobing just as Harry turned and immediately set off toward the bed. His movements were fast, purposeful, and confident, which was a great contrast to Harry uncertain trembling, and Harry found himself holding his breath, curious what Voldemort was going to do.

Voldemort wasted no time pushing Harry onto his back and restraining Harry's arms.

"If you want me to stop, say 'Hufflepuff,'" Voldemort said before nudging Harry's head to the side and sinking his teeth hard into Harry's neck.

Harry let out a very soft cry, and Voldemort's fist tightened in his hair to keep him from moving away. Voldemort bit Harry a second time, quite closely to where he'd bitten him the first time, and then moved down Harry's neck, leaving a trail of teeth marks and burns clear to Harry's collarbone. Harry struggled all the while, not quite certain if he _really_ wanted to get away or not, until Voldemort paused and rose above Harry. Voldemort looked down Harry's body hungrily once, then brought his mouth dangerously close to Harry's nipple.

"Wait!" Harry said. "Hufflepuff!"

Voldemort paused, but was clearly extremely annoyed when he looked up at Harry. "Do you _really_ want me to stop, Harry?"

Harry nearly whimpered. "No," he said, not meeting Voldemort's eyes. "I just wanted to know that you really would stop."

"_Yes,_ Harry, I really will stop." Then he started again. His teeth sank into Harry's nipple before Harry had time to prepare himself. Harry screamed in pain and bucked on instinct, but that only worsened the pain as the sensitive skin was tugged around and scraped against Voldemort's teeth. When Voldemort finally let go, Harry looked down and found spots of blood around his throbbing nipple.

Voldemort leaned forward and Harry couldn't hold in his whine of fear, but Voldemort didn't bite him again. Instead, he licked Harry's abused nipple almost gently, lapping up the blood. It still stung slightly, but it wasn't nearly so bad as the bite and was quite a relief comparatively.

Harry let out a few shaking breaths and tried to relax. His head was spinning. _Safe._ He was safe. His heart was pounding and he had this strange urge to whine in pain and disgust and defeat all at once and then hold Voldemort closer to him and let himself be hurt again and again. It wasn't control itself that he'd given up, but rather the shallow and unsustainable illusion of it that he'd been holding onto his whole life, and for once it felt _wonderful_ to be completely at another's mercy, completely in the moment.

And he was safe.

Safe enough.

Voldemort moved to the other side of Harry's chest and bit him hard several inches above his breast. Harry bucked again and when Voldemort pulled away Harry glanced down at the red marks and wondered what his neck must have looked like. Voldemort, as though reading Harry's mind, turned and waved a hand at the ceiling. The tiles instantly transfigured into mirrors, and Harry saw himself pinned beneath the Dark Lord who'd murdered his parents, bloody, sweating, and begging for more with huge green eyes. He hadn't realized how very much his face was betraying him.

Voldemort summoned his wand, and Harry looked away from the mirror and right into the tip of it. Voldemort waved it and Harry was instantly collared and shackled to the bed. Harry glanced from the mirror to Voldemort several times, listening to his own heart beat and wondering if Voldemort's dark smile meant that now would be a good time to say 'Hufflepuff,' but ultimately decided he wasn't at that point yet.

Voldemort rested his wand at Harry's navel. "_Sectumsempra_."

Harry's skin ripped in a hundred places at once, and Harry let out his loudest scream of the night just as Voldemort shoved into him using the least amount of lubrication possible. When Voldemort began to move in and out of Harry brutally, Harry was so out of breath that all he could manage were weak whimpers as his eyes remained on the ceiling, on the image of his bleeding body being fucked by the Dark Lord. Voldemort quickly tired of the whimpering and, with another wave of his wand, had Harry gagged. Voldemort leaned forward several times and bit Harry hard again, widening the gashes.

Harry was incoherent. He was hurt, watching himself be used fast and hard by his mortal enemy, and somehow loving every moment of it; the adrenaline rush, the feeling of finally being punished for the unforgivable failure of not destroying all of the horcruxes, and the completely, relaxing surrender.

When Voldemort came inside of Harry, Harry was too far gone to notice or even particularly _care_ that Voldemort's hands went straight to Harry's balls, offering not pain but pleasure now. He finished Harry off in minutes and vanished the chains and the mirrors.

"I hope you're happy now, you insatiable slut," Voldemort said, pulling the gag out of Harry's mouth with his hands rather than with magic. "I've got work to do."

Harry nodded, rolled onto his side, snuggled down into his pillow, and slept more soundly than he had in years.


	4. Chapter 4

Title: Last Chance  
><span>Author:<span> Dragon_of_Venus  
><span>Pairings:<span> Voldemort/Harry  
><span>Rating (Fic):<span> NC-17  
><span>Rating (Chapter):<span> PG-13  
><span>Word-Count (Fic):<span> 35,000-40,000  
><span>Word-Count (Chapter):<span> 5,304  
><span>Master List:<span> Here.  
><span>Summary:<span> AU after Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort is in control of the wizarding world. Harry is captured and placed under Voldemort's protection because of the horcrux.  
><span>Warnings (Fic):<span> Discussions of rape, graphic attempted rape (not in the main pairing), suicide, character death, slurs, sexual harassment, abductions, history of violence within the main pairing, mentions of hate crimes and torture.  
><span>Warnings (Chapter):<span> Sexual harassment, attempted sexual assault, and discussions of rape.  
><span>Contains:<span> Consensual sex between adults, BDSM, masturbation, voyerism, Voldemort-wins AU.  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> Harry Potter and all related characters, settings, and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling, not to me. I receive no money for writing this or any other Harry Potter related piece.

Harry slept until noon the next day, and then Voldemort lost patience, woke him up, and made him eat a rather large lunch to make up for missing breakfast. He'd then had Harry quickly change back into Rabastan's hand-me-downs, which had been washed by the elf overnight, and then Harry had been unceremoniously apparated back to the Lestrange's house without a word about what had transpired the night before, in spite of Harry still being obviously covered in cuts and bite marks. For the second day in a row, Harry was glad that he was wearing a turtleneck.

The Lestranges left him completely alone. He passed Rabastan in the hallway once, and the man didn't so much as make eye contact. Apparently Voldemort had driven the message home that they were not allowed to hurt Harry under any circumstances.

That just left Harry alone with his thoughts, all day long.

Harry _tried_ not to think about Voldemort. He really tried. He settled down in the Lestrange's library and read every book about Quidditch he could find, then he listened to the old radio in his room until he had every Celestina Warbeck Christmas song memorized, then he caught himself thinking about Voldemort for five seconds straight. To remedy this, he slipped out into the garden, where he ran laps and thought about his friends until his head started spinning. Afraid that he'd be breaking his vow if he kept going, he walked over to the backyard, found an old swing that was protected from the rain by the house, and curled up in it.

He had fucked Voldemort.

He had fucked the man who murdered his parents.

He had fucked _the Dark Lord_, the bigoted asshole who'd murdered thousands, struck fear in the hearts of millions, and single-handedly unleashed previously unknown terror on the United Kingdom, Harry's home.

And he'd loved every second of it. He was still half running on the strange high from doing something that he knew was completely wrong and against not only his better judgment but all of his morals. He still had this strange urge to curl up in Voldemort's bed and relax and feel _safe_ with a man that he should never feel safe with. He wanted to again hand control over to a man that he should never be out of control around.

Except that he hadn't really given control to Voldemort, had he? Voldemort had stopped when Harry told him to, and that had been part of the thrill of it. Even as Harry calmly took all of the pain Voldemort wanted to give him, _Harry_ was in control of when it stopped. Harry was giving himself this twisted illusion that he had power that he didn't really have in his relationship with a man that he would never really have a real relationship with.

He was a _thing_ to Voldemort. Voldemort had _joked_ about the possibility of Harry's mind and soul being swallowed by the horcrux. He'd said, or at least implied, that it would be a _relief_... until Harry pointed out that it might have negative consequences for Voldemort.

Still, neither of them had ever claimed they loved the other. Hell, even while fucking Harry, Voldemort hadn't even been behaving like he _liked_Harry. Voldemort _didn't_ like Harry. Harry was almost certain of that. And whomever else Voldemort had fucked and cut up, he probably hadn't liked him either. Voldemort wasn't really the sort of guy who _liked_ people.

There was something wrong with Harry.

His life had changed too much, too suddenly, and it was doing shit to his head. He knew on every level that he could not trust Voldemort, but he was suddenly finding himself in a position where he had absolutely no choice _but_ to trust Voldemort, and his psyche was dealing with having to walk this horrible tight-rope day-in and day-out by sexualizing the experience.

He wondered if it would go away after a while, or if he was doomed to spend the rest of his life getting off and having Voldemort eat him alive, cut him to pieces, then fuck him hard, all while snapping orders at him and keeping a very close on him to make sure that he wasn't doing anything that might _endanger_ him.

Danger? Did having your throat bitten clean off and being sliced into ribbons not count as _danger_ to Voldemort?

Wasn't there something to be said about _mental_ danger? Surely Harry'd be safer while he was sane. Or maybe not. Frank and Alice Longbottom were safe enough in St. Mungos, and Harry didn't think he really _needed_ his sanity for him to be an acceptable for the horcrux, so perhaps he should just be grateful that Voldemort hadn't just put him in with them.

And if Voldemort wanted to fuck him... Well, _Harry_ had started it. Perhaps if Harry just never did it again, it would never happen again. He could only hope so.

Harry realized that at some point in his musings he'd started to actually swing, and the now the wind was making him quite cold. He sat up and gripped one of the bars that didn't move, causing one of the bars that _did_ move to crash into his arm. The pain probably wouldn't have been terrible if it the bar hadn't hit one of the cuts from the sectumsempra curse last night. Voldemort had healed him enough to keep him from bleeding to death, sleep a little, and not scar beyond recognition, but he hadn't _completely_ healed the cuts, no doubt because he wanted Harry to have something to prove to himself that it had all really happened in case he began to doubt his memory. Harry watched the blood rise to the surface and stain his robes almost unnoticeably, the way that the blood from Rodolphus' cut had stained the collar yesterday. He wondered how much blood he really had left in him. It seemed he'd be quickly out of it, between Voldemort and Rodolphus.

Harry sighed, stood up, and shivered. He needed to go inside. He was allowed in a certain part of the gardens, so he hadn't broken any rules by going out without asking permission, but he still didn't think it was going to do much good for his relationship with the Lestranges for him to be disappearing for an hour or so without telling them whereto. Perhaps if he was lucky, he'd be back inside and in his room before they noticed that he'd even left.

Besides, the swing was soaked. Harry brushed the water off it and attempted, mostly in vain because of the wind, to wring out his robes. He was certainly going to leave quite a mess for Twoey on his way up to his rooms. One more thing he'd have to apologize to the elf for when he got the chance, he supposed.

He stepped back into the house through the sliding glass door off the dining room. None of the Lestranges were in the dining room, and he could hear no noises of them frantically searching for him, so he assumed he was safe.

He stepped out of the dinning room and walked right into Bellatrix.

"What is wrong with you?" she said. She looked from the wet spot on her own robes to Harry's soaked robes and scoffed. "Have you been _outside_in this weather? And without a traveler's cloak?"

"Only for a little while," Harry said, backing into the dining room slightly. "And I tried to wait on the swing to dry, only the wind—"

"I don't _care_! Just _dry_ them you stupid half-blood."

"I..." Harry took a deep breath, knowing already that this was going to end badly for him. "...I don't know how..."

Bellatrix blinked at him in shock for a moment. "You're joking, right?"

"No, actually..." Harry said, shifting slightly.

"That's _second-year_ Charms!"

"I don't remember every little thing that happened when I was twelve."

Bellatrix laughed cruelly.

"...To be fair," Harry said, "There were other things going on that year that seemed much more important than Charms."

She was still laughing, and clearly not listening.

"Do _you_ know how to dry them?"

Bellatrix straightened, smirking at him. "I do, in fact... but I think I'd rather see you just drop those robes here and run to your room in your pants."

"Not funny," Harry said.

"I beg to differ. Come on. Let's see what the savior of the wizarding world looks like underneath his robes. Funny, of all the girls in the kingdom who've fantasized about this, I've never been one of them."

Harry swallowed hard. Harry had never seen Rodolphus topless before, but he could imagine what the man looked like without his robes on. Rodolphus was muscular and tall, and Harry really couldn't compete. Harry _knew_ there'd be bad things in store for him if Bellatrix saw his scrawny body even _without_ the teeth marks and the cuts. With them... the thought was almost unimaginably horrifying.

"_Off_, Harry," Bellatrix said, drawing her wand.

Harry swallowed hard. He really didn't have any choice. Maybe Bellatrix would just think that Voldemort had tortured him. Maybe she'd focus on the cuts and not even notice the bite marks. He had to hope so, because it seemed pretty clear that he was not getting back to his room with those robes on.

Harry took one deep breath and let them fall to the wooden dinning room floor.

Bellatrix let out half of the laugh that she'd clearly already had on her lips before she caught herself. Harry had already slipped past her, but she spun quickly and caught him by the hair.

"Oh my _god_," she said, but there was a small, ambiguous high pitch to her voice that might have been humor or might have been discomfort. Harry wasn't sure, immediately.

"Let's see..." Bellatrix said. She released Harry's hair and circled him a few times, taking in _every_ detail. There was not chance that she missed the bite marks all over his neck and surrounding his nipple.

"The Dark Lord..." she said.

Harry bit down a number of sarcastic comments, deciding instead that it was better to leave the identity of his... partner... at least somewhat ambiguous.

Bellatrix began laughing again. "I can't say I'm surprised. He's never done it before, but I've never heard of him _stopping_ the others from doing it, and it probably did you some good, you arrogant little bitch." There was something very dark in her voice, though she continued laughing. Harry wasn't sure what it meant, but he was quite sure he didn't like it. She grabbed his chin and made him look her in her cold eyes. "I hope you know what an _unparalleled_ honor it is for a worthless half-blood to have the Dark Lord's cock in him."

Harry tugged away quickly. "Do _you_ know, Bellatrix? Outside of your dreams, I mean?"

"Crucio!"

Harry dove to his right and missed the curse, then spun quickly. "Your master said you're not allowed to hurt me!"

Bellatrix stopped and put her wand back in her pocket. "Indeed he did," she said. "Very well. Go to your room, baby Potter. There are other ways of taking care of an impudent slut."

Harry just swore and wasted no time getting to his room.

Hermione didn't have time to do anything but gasp as arms wrapped around her from behind and a face buried itself in her neck, smelling her hair. Her wand was lifted from her pocket and thrown behind her before she could reach for it. "Hello there, pretty little mudblood..."

The rancid breath nearly made Hermione gag, and the feeling of her captor's breath over her neck made her skin crawl. She was on the ground floor of Malfoy Manor, trying not to let her nerves at the thought of seeing the Dark Lord, and no doubt speaking to him directly after the meeting about the work she'd handed in last night, destroy her. The next Death Eater meeting was just upstairs, due to begin in an hour or so. Hermione knew that a number of the Death Eaters _would_ be that early, but she'd had no particular desire to be one of them, so she'd made herself scarce near the kitchen. She hadn't imagined that anyone would actually come after her.

Her captor chuckled. "Aren't you going to talk to me, mudblood?"

"I—h-half-blood..." Hermione said, struggling but not managing to break the man's grip.

"Now now..." the man said, "Don't try that. Everyone knows better. You're just a filthy little stain on our organization... and if you _were_ a half-blood, you wouldn't be much better. I am so fucking sick of those half-bloods coming in and gaining favor with the Dark Lord." He touched his wand to Hermione's throat, just beneath her chin, at the very top of her turtleneck. Hermione redoubled her struggles, but it was useless. She couldn't break his grip. "Stop that," he said. He began to move his wand slowly downward and, to Hermione's simultaneous relief and horror, it cut open her robes, not her skin. He sliced through the cloth clear to Hermione's hips, then stopped and casually pushed them over Hermione's shoulders.

Hermione turned frantically, hoping to scratch his eyes or _at least_ slap him hard, but he caught her hand and cut her bra off her hastily, then pushed her to the floor in nothing but her knickers.

Hermione screamed as loudly as she could before rolling over and moving for her wand.

"Now what was the point in that?" Macnair said, levitating her wand into his hand. "No one is going to come for a stupid mudblood slut like you. What's there to protect?" He chuckled and took a few steps closer to her.

Hermione backed away from her, but quickly found herself pressed against a wall.

"Don't be so nervous. It's not like I'm going to _kill_ you. Not if you're good, any—"

"_Sectumsempra_."

The tips of the three longest fingers of Macnair's left hand fell to the ground in bloody heaps. Macnair screamed and turned around quickly, the killing curse out of his mouth before he was even able to see his assailant.

Snape watched calmly as it rushed by, two feet to his left, and cracked the Malfoy's drywall.

"_Crucio_."

Macnair dropped both his wand and Hermione's when he hit the ground in agony. Hermione told herself that she should move for her wand, but couldn't will herself to get any closer to the man. Instead, she stood and ran for the nearest room to her, a bathroom. She slammed the door and locked it, but remained near the door to listen to the conversation that took place once Macnair's screaming died.

"_Fuck you_, Severus. You go _straight_ for cutting bits off? What is this slut to you?"

"I don't see what that matters. Be glad I chose _those_ bits and not bits far dearer to you."

There was a second of silence, then Macnair laughed. "_Ooooh_. I've got it. If _you_ wanted her, you might have just said something. I guess it's for the best. Your blood's already ruined. I won't fight you."

"You would be very wise not to," Snape said. "If I catch you even getting _near_ her again, I will kill you. In fact, put the word around so that_everyone_ knows that."

"Fine. I'll see you at the meeting, I suppose."

"And Macnair?"

"Huh?"

"Longbottom, too."

Macnair chucked. "Fine. Fine."

Things were quiet for a minute, then there was a knock on the bathroom door.

"Ms. Granger, please come out. I am not going to hurt you."

Hermione stayed where she was. Snape waited several seconds and sighed.

"I don't intend to _rape_ you either, Ms. Granger."

Hermione took a deep breath, but it didn't help much. She _had_ to go out there, sometime, though. _You're not safe here, either_, she reminded herself. She turned on the sink, let it run for a moment until it was as cold as she could get it, and then she splashed the icy water over her face once, twice, thrice... five times before she felt she'd suppressed the tears that were begging to fall and gotten enough of a grip on herself to even think about opening the door.

"Ms. Granger..."

She looked around for a towel or something to cover herself with, but it was only a half-bath and there was nothing bigger than the hand-towel to use. Still, the hand-towel was better than nothing. She draped it over her breasts and tucked it under her arms before she unlocked the door and opened it.

Snape had removed his traveler's cloak and was holding it out to her. Hermione grabbed it quickly slipped it on. She had to hold it closed, but it was certainly better than walking back to her room topless They stared at each other in silence for a moment, then Hermione realized that she probably owed him a thank-you and gave it.

Snape just sighed and shook his head. "You should stay close to me," he said. "You're not anyone's favorite Death Eater and that's not going to change anytime soon."

"I'm Neville's favorite," Hermione said.

Snape rolled his eyes. "_He_ would probably be even wiser than you to stay close to me. The two of you shouldn't go thinking that you're safe just because the Dark Lord himself has decided not to hurt you."

"Do you really think that I _am_ thinking that right now?" Hermione said, a bit more harshly than she'd intended. Snape began to lead her toward the stairs, and she realized that she was shaking.

Snape stopped for a second and looked at her curiously. "No. I suppose I don't think you're thinking that. Still, all the more reason for you to stay near me. I may be just a filthy half-blood myself, but I'm a filthy half-blood that the Dark Lord is quite fond of and who is quite quick with a curse. Your enemies know better than to make themselves _my_ enemies."

"And if I can't trust Albus Dumbledore's murderer, who can I trust?"

Snape opened his mouth, but seemed to decide against his first answer. He shut his mouth for a second before speaking again. "Who indeed?" he said before he began to walk again.

He waited three seconds, then turned around to find Hermione following him.

He felt rather smug about that, and he knew that it showed on his face. "Lead the way to your room, Ms. Granger. I doubt you'll be bothered again, but it won't hurt for me to remain near you until I leave."

Hermione nodded. Unfortunately, to get to her room they had to walk to walk right past a rather large gathering a Death Eaters, and very few of them let the fact that Snape had staked some kind of claim to her stop them from snickering and getting as much of an eyeful as they could of her exposed midriff and legs. By the time Hermione actually made it back to her room, she was trembling violently and a quick glance in the mirror told her she was absolutely scarlet from the top of her head down to her neck.

She quickly selected the thickest and most conservative robe from the collection that she'd inherited from Narcissa, and then covered it with her Death Eater cloak and mask. Wearing them was not required at planned meetings that were taking place in someone's house, since the risk of being caught was fairly low, but a number of Death Eaters wore them to every meeting anyway—general anti-social Death Eaters who cared more about their identity being protected from spies—and Hermione was in a mood to have every part of her body as covered as it could possibly be.

Hermione looked at herself in the mirror one more time, Death Eater mask and all, and was shocked by the fact that she felt... almost _better_ with it on. She looked more powerful, more frightening, and generally like a force to be reckoned with rather than a pathetic teenage girl who wasn't safe in the house where she was being forced to sleep. Between her own dangerous appearance and Snape's dangerous presence, she almost felt that she could survive this meeting, and perhaps the ones that would follow.

Hermione felt awkward about having Snape right outside of her room. Something within her was screaming that she shouldn't trust _any_ man just then and that she needed to be careful that she hadn't been rescued from one rapist only to go right into the arms of another, but at the same time, she believed him when he'd said he had no intention of hurting or raping her. Maybe it was the years she'd spent thinking of him as_professor_ Snape that made it difficult to reconcile his image with that of a rapist, or maybe it was something about the look in his eyes, but she really believed that he didn't want to see her hurt.

Still, Dumbledore had probably believed that, too. She'd have to be on her guard. Let him keep her safe while they were in public, and she'd keep herself safe from _him_ when they were in private.

She cast a supersensory charm on herself that she didn't intend to remove any time soon, and then promised herself she'd spend some time in the Malfoys' library later, reading over some of the books of curses, for her own protection.

She bent down to pick up Snape's traveler's cloak, and heard a sob break from her lips. She froze. She'd actually thought for a minute there that she was doing rather well. She picked the cloak up and took three very deep breaths, then opened the door.

Snape was casually leaning against the wall. He looked for a moment as though he wanted to say something about her wearing the complete Death Eater uniform, but he must have changed his mind. He took his cloak back, and Hermione found herself battling with a desire to get closer to him, as though her protection from the other Death Eaters exponentially increased based on how close to him she was, but also to stay far enough away from him that he wouldn't be able to grab her. She settled on walking just _within_ his reach as they headed toward the room where the meeting would take place.

"Ms. Granger..." Snape said as they walked back, "I don't suppose you know _why_ Macnair suddenly found the courage to attack you?"

Hermione's stomach flipped. How long had he wanted to do that? She barely managed to keep her lunch in. Not trusting herself to open her mouth, she just shook her head.

"You haven't heard the rumors?"

Hermione shook her head again. Rumors? She didn't make a habit of gossiping with Death Eaters.

Snape sighed. "Then I suppose it's better that you hear from me than from Bella..." Snape's voice got suddenly much tighter, as though he himself were suppressing tears. "Please know, though, that I get absolutely no pleasure from being the one to deliver this news..."

"Professor..." Hermione said.

"I'm not your professor anymore," Snape said harshly. Then he stopped and sighed. "The Dark Lord raped Potter, or so Bellatrix has been telling everyone."

Hermione stopped. Her entire world screeched to a half and for a minute straight she could do nothing but stand there, opening and closing her mouth as she tried to form a coherent response. Finally, she managed, "No..."

Snape sighed.

"_No_," Hermione said, more sternly. "He didn't! He couldn't! I just—there's no way..."

"I am not certain, myself," Snape said. "The Dark Lord has not... done this sort of thing before, that I am aware, but he has certainly never objected when other Death Eaters..." Snape sighed. "I will ask him about it later. It is my most sincere _hope_ that Bella is lying, but I am not certain."

"And you'll just believe him?"

"I believe," Snape said, "That if the Dark Lord has really done what Bella claims he has done, he will be transparent about it. He has nothing to fear from admitting to it. There are very few Death Eaters who'd object to Mr. Potter being hurt... And, for Bella's part, if she _has_ lied, she will be dealt with."

"Why would she tell a lie like that?"

"Why indeed..." Snape said. "I must admit, I find it rather out of character for her. Bella has long liked to fancy that she alone could earn the privilege of sharing the Dark Lord's bed, and I doubt that fancy would remain unshaken if the Dark Lord began to bring unwilling partners to his bed. I have a strong suspicion that she is deeply delusional on this matter and that Antonin Dolohov was never entirely truthful about what first drew him into the Dark Lord's circle... but that was decades ago, at Hogwarts... before even Bella was born. Bella has never taken the rumors particularly seriously. I am certain that if Bella really believes what she's saying, she isn't nearly as happy about it as she is giving everyone the impression she is."

"Is that a problem for Harry?"

"I sincerely hope not. The Dark Lord believes that Harry is safe with the Lestranges. I disagree, but he has twice denied my request to have the boy moved into my custody. I don't think he's quite forgotten..." A distant looked passed over Snape's face, and Hermione quickly got the impression that he'd forgotten she was there.

"What?"

"Hm? Oh, nothing. I do not think it would be in my own best interest to ask a third time."

Hermione nodded. They walked the rest of the way to the Death Eater meeting in silence, and Snape casually took a seat, ignoring the dirty looks he got from Macnair and a few others. Hermione sat on the floor near his legs, and when Neville arrived he joined her and she wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly without a word throughout the entire meeting. Neville didn't ask why, but seemed just as glad to have her arms around him as she was to have his around her.

True to his word, when the meeting ended Snape rose and waited for the Dark Lord to acknowledge him, but when the Dark Lord wandered over to him, it was Hermione and Neville he first spoke to.

Neville's grip on Hermione tightened slightly. Hermione sat up straighter, as though to shield Neville from Voldemort. Both, however, did their best to look subservient in spite of these small gestures.

"Careful, Longbottom," Voldemort said. "Not many people will approve of the two of you making half-blood babies in the middle of these meetings."

Neville opened his mouth to respond, but Voldemort didn't give him time.

"You're joining the raid in Nottingham tomorrow night. Report to Lucius for details."

Neville shut his mouth.

Voldemort raised an eyebrow pointedly.

"Yes, my lord," Neville muttered.

Voldemort turned to Hermione. "Your alchemy was perfect," he said. "But you used your own blood in the calculations."

"Is that a problem?"

"Not if you're hoping to be caught with irrefutable evidence. Think about these things, next time."

Hermione nodded. "Yes, my lord."

Snape decided to intervene there, for Hermione and Neville's sake as much as for the sake of putting his own worries at rest. "My lord, if I may have a word in the other room...?"

Voldemort sighed, but consented. They moved quickly into the guest bedroom across the hallway, and Snape decided to just be blunt, "My lord, are the rumors about you and Potter true?"

"The rumors about me and Potter?" Voldemort said. His posture straightened suddenly and his eyes narrowed very slightly. "I was not aware of any rumors."

Snape sighed. "Did you rape Potter, my lord?" Seeing the look that came into his master's eyes at this, Snape quickly added, "I ask merely because I worry about the _impudence in the ranks_ if there are those who would spread rumors about you without being very certain they're true."

The look of fury melted from the Dark Lord's face. He sighed. "No, Severus, I have not raped Potter. I would thank you to put the word around that she does not have her facts straight on the matter of what happened in my bedroom last night, and that she would do well to recant her claims and not speak any more about this until she _does_ have her facts straight."

"My lord, on the subject of having our facts straight, if I may inquire as to—"

"You may _not_, Severus."

Snape flinched. "Very well. You're right, my lord. Of course. I overstepped my bounds. I will go speak with Bellatrix. Good night."

"Good night, Severus."

Snape slipped back into the meeting room and found Hermione and Neville standing by the door, looking at him eagerly. Hermione had filled Neville in on everything while Snape was speaking to the Dark Lord, and Neville was, if anything, even more horrified than Hermione was to think that Voldemort might have violated Harry.

Snape just shook his head without saying a word to them.

They both sighed and slumped in visible relief, though Neville still looked slightly green. Snape wasn't sure whether that was for Harry's sake or for his own sake. Neville was not the sort of boy that Snape could imagine handling a raid very well.

"You should go, Longbottom," Snape said. "Granger, I understand if you want to stay in this room until all of the others have left..."

Hermione nodded. She and Neville hugged each other tightly one last time and said their goodbyes before Neville disapparated away.

Snape turned to find Bella laughing about something with her sister and immediately headed toward her.

"Bella..." he said as politely as he could.

She looked at him as though he was something the cat had just spit up. Narcissa, for her part, walked around Bella and gave him a quick hug.

"The Dark Lord has requested that I tell you that it would be in your own best interest not to gossip about him without first getting your facts checked," Snape said. He didn't quite yell it, but he was careful to say it loudly enough that everyone around would hear. A good majority of the Death Eaters had stuck around to talk to each other and drink as much of the Malfoys' wine as they could before Lucius threw them out, so making it clear that the rumors would false in this setting would likely put them to rest for good.

Bellatrix froze. "But I saw... and the boy said that... and that means that—"

"_Bella_," Snape said, "Think _very_ carefully about what you are about to say. The Dark Lord will not be amused if you recant one rumor you started about him only to immediately replace it with another."

Bella was clearly burning the entire manor down with her eyes. "You're right, Severus." Addressing the room as a whole, she said, "Forgive me. I was apparently mistaken on some things."

The room gave a collective shrug and appeared to be over it almost immediately.

Snape looked from Bella to Narcissa and forced a smile. "Forgive me for interrupting you."

"It was quite alright," Bella said. "I need to go home and have a discussion with a certain _other_ half-blood anyway..."

Narcissa opened her mouth as though to say something, but Bella was gone before she got the chance.

Narcissa gave a rather indignant 'humf' and turned to Snape. "Not so much as a 'goodbye!'"

Snape shook his head. "Your sister always has been quite the charmer."


	5. Chapter 5

Title: Last Chance  
><span>Author:<span> Dragon_of_Venus  
><span>Pairings:<span> Voldemort/Harry  
><span>Rating (Fic):<span> NC-17  
><span>Rating (Chapter):<span> PG-13  
><span>Word-Count (Fic):<span> 35,000-40,000  
><span>Word-Count (Chapter):<span> 5,281  
><span>Master List:<span> Here.  
><span>Summary:<span> AU after Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort is in control of the wizarding world. Harry is captured and placed under Voldemort's protection because of the horcrux.  
><span>Warnings (Fic):<span> Discussions of rape, graphic attempted rape (not in the main pairing), suicide, character death, slurs, sexual harassment, abductions, history of violence within the main pairing, mentions of hate crimes and torture.  
><span>Warnings (Chapter):<span> Discussion of rape, character death, offensive language  
><span>Contains:<span> Consensual sex between adults, BDSM, masturbation, voyerism, Voldemort-wins AU.  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> Harry Potter and all related characters, settings, and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling, not to me. I receive no money for writing this or any other Harry Potter related piece.

* * *

><p>"You stupid little bitch!"<p>

Harry dodged one curse, and then Rodolphus wrenched his wife's wand out of her hand. Bellatrix spun and grasped desperately for her wand for a moment, but he held it well above her reach, and when she began to claw at his face he cast a spell Harry had never heard of before and didn't entirely catch, and all of the muscles in her hands seemed to relax at once. Rodolphus gave Harry a look that seemed almost _sorry_, and then he stared at his wife for a moment with a look that seemed at first to be distaste but quickly faded into resignation, then he walked out of the room without a word to either of them.

Bellatrix watched him go, but seemed to forget about him the moment he was out of Harry's room.

"_You_," she said, her arms swinging wildly as she turned. "You _seduced_ him!"

Harry's face screwed up in distaste and he opened his mouth to object before realizing that, in some twisted sense of the word, maybe he _had_seduced Voldemort. He certainly didn't think of it that way; "Invited" would be a touch more accurate ("Begged" some part of Harry's mind supplied. He pushed the thought away quickly.) but what was the difference, really?

"Well? Don't you have anything to say for yourself, slut?"

Harry shrugged. "'Seduced' seems a bit grand a word for it. It wasn't nearly that hard. It was almost as though he'd wanted to do it for a while."

She glanced around the room furiously, searching for a way to hurt him even with her wand confiscated and her arms hanging uselessly at her sides, not responding to even the basic commands. She was beyond worrying about her master's punishment for harming the boy. When she realized that there was precious little she could do in her present state, she settled for walking closer to the boy and aiming a kick at him. He dodged it easily.

"You _dared_ to soil Slytherin blood with your filthy half-blood—"

"My filthy half-blood was good enough to resurrect him," Harry said, scooting back on his bed so that in order to get close enough to hurt him, she'd have to sacrifice the use of her legs to crawl on her knees. Unless she _bit_ him, he'd be safe. "Though maybe you didn't know that. You weren't there, were you? Oh, what _was_ it that you were doing—"

"I'd spend a thousand years in Hell for the Dark Lord. Thirteen years in Azkaban was a _very_ small sacrifice," Bellatrix said, not following Harry onto the bed. "You can't hurt me with that."

Harry laughed. "Of course you would. I don't see why anyone _wouldn't_, for all the thanks you all got when you got out. The praise, the money, the glory, the special places in his heart—Oh! Wait. That isn't quite how it's happened, is it? Thirteen years in Azkaban and when you finally return to him he has sex with the brat that caused his downfall before he looks twice at _you_."

Bellatrix froze.

"I can hurt you with _that_, can't I? And I bet I could get him to do it again before you could get him to do it a first time." Harry took a deep breath, and he realized that he found the look on her face—as though he'd slapped her—oddly encouraging. "He doesn't even _appreciate_ you, let alone love you. Face it, you spent thirteen years wallowing in misery for him, and all it got you was a 'Good job,' and a dangerous assignment _which you failed_. Tell me, Bella: Did he remember all of those dementors while he was punishing you after the Department of Mysteries?"

Bellatrix's face was completely blank.

"While you were sitting in Azkaban, the people you'd written off as worthless were out _doing_ things for your master, and that didn't escape your master's notice. _Peter Pettigrew_, of all people, went out and _found_ him when you could think of nothing better to do than confess and go to Azkaban for him. Barty Crouch Jr. may have denounced the Dark Lord to the Wizengamot and left the three of you to rot in prison while he sat comfortably at home, but _he_ was the one who Voldemort never would have made it back without. And _guess_ which of you he called his most faithful servant at his resurrection."

Bellatrix looked like she had something very unpleasant-tasting in her mouth. She was quiet for several seconds, before she spoke. "You can thank your dear potions professor for my silence on this issue _for now_." She glared at him very pointedly. "But mark me, Potter, as soon as I get the chance, I _will_ tell _everyone_. The Dark Lord will not be bothered by the rumors, and no one will blame him for indulging in a pretty half-blood whore in a moment of weakness, but what will _your_ friends say? I've seen the marks myself and you've admitted it twice, Potter. I'll find a way to make them believe and I will _ruin_ you... Not that you aren't already ruined." She laughed. "A lot of good the Savior of the Wizarding World is doing his people now. A fucking _bartender_ got the mud-bloods out while you were going camping. And do you know how many _thousands_ of them we killed before then? But don't worry. Maybe if you wait long enough, another bartender will come along and destroy the Dark Lord. You always have survived on luck and on the sacrifice of others."

Harry flinched slightly, but thought better of responding, hoping that instead she'd just leave. It wasn't as though Harry was particularly _opposed_to someone else coming along and solving all of his problems. Before Bella had time to make the choice to leave or stay on her own, though, a voice called up from the first floor:

"Aunt Bella? Uncle Rudy? Stan? Is anyone here?"

Bella took a deep breath, plastered on a very smile, and slipped out of Harry's room. She took about three steps before remembering that she did not have the use of her arms, then she turned to her left and slipped into the master bedroom, and returned the hallway a moment later, rubbing her arms absentmindedly with her husband at her heals. "Draco! What are you doing here?"

Admittedly curious about that very same thing, Harry followed her out of his room as quietly as he could. He remained on the second floor and peaked over the railing to find Draco standing in the living room, just a foot or so away from the still-green fireplace, in elegant and festive red and green robes. He hugged his aunt, and the look on his face once his head was over her shoulder was remarkably similar to the look on Dudley's face whenever he turned away after kissing Aunt Marge. He and Rodolphus _both_ seemed to find the hug they shared rather unpleasant, and Harry was fairly certain that, though probably in different ways, they must both have been fairly well-rewarded for these displays of affection, or else they would never happen.

"Mother sent me to invite you all to Christmas."

"You could have sent an owl."

The words 'we were going to,' ghosted across Draco's lips, but he didn't quite speak them. "This seemed more welcoming."

Bella sighed. "That's very nice of you," she said, "But we have..."

Draco seemed _very_ read for this excuse, and Harry was struck by the feeling that he was sent in person specifically so that he could give what Harry could only assume was a coached answer. "Don't worry about that. We have one too. We'll just lock them in a room together somewhere. If we're lucky, they'll fight to death." Harry really smiled for what seemed like the first time in ages. An entire day alone with Hermione? That was the best Christmas gift he could imagine!

Draco and Bella shared a laugh for a moment, and Draco went on, in the voice of a child half his age, "Please come, Aunt Bella. It would mean the world to mother. She's been saying lately that the two of you haven't spent much time together since Potter's capture."

Bella sighed. "Oh, very well then. Your mother knows I can't say no to her."

"Thank you, Aunt Bella! Mother will be thrilled. I'll see you on Christmas!"

"It's a date. And speaking of which, will your fiancée be there?"

Fiancée? Harry quickly talked himself out of being surprised. It had been _years_, and Draco was free. Harry's life had come to a screeching halt the day Albus Dumbledore died, but the rest of the world hadn't. Draco was a Death Eater, heir to a vast fortune, and not terribly hard on the eyes, if a bit skinny for Harry's taste. It was perfectly natural that his life would have gone on and gone in _that_ direction. He wondered if it was Pansy. He supposed he'd find that out on Christmas Day.

"Only for dinner. She's spending the morning with her parents."

"Well, we'll miss her until dinner, then. Goodbye, Draco! We'll see you at Christmas!"

Harry ducked back into his room and shut the door as quietly as he could. If the Lestranges noticed him spying, they didn't think it was worth going back into Harry's room to say anything about it. When Harry finally settled into the bed after a very long day, listening to the sound of the rain on his window, he dozed off for the second night in a row with a smile on his face, and he slept well.

* * *

><p>The days slipped by with such monotony that it was on pure chance that Harry turned on the radio in his room and heard "Happy Christmas!" to even know that the day was there. The Lestranges hadn't put up a tree or any decorations, and Harry had seen no hint of them even getting each other presents, so the only thing in sight that in any way called the idea of "Christmas" to mind was the very thin layer of snow on the ground outside. Harry didn't think it would last the day.<p>

Still, it brightened his spirits immediately to know that it was Christmas, because unless plans had changed, that meant he was going to get to see Hermione. Harry showered and dressed quickly, and had no trouble blocking out the Lestranges' conversation as he ate his breakfast. He spent the morning trying to keep his excitement in check until Rodolphus finally walked into his room, said simply "Let's go," and then took made him floo Malfoy Manor.

The Malfoys _did_ keep Christmas, and in such an extravagant way that going there from Lestrange Manor felt like stepping into a different world. Most of the house seemed to be lit exclusively by Christmas lanterns, and holly and mistletoe were handing in so many places that Harry was nearly afraid to walk for fear of having to kiss Draco. There was a _huge_ tree in the room that Harry came out of the fireplace in, the tip of which touched the vaulted ceiling, and the area beneath the tree was covered with so many presents that even a young Dudley would have thought it was excessive. Paper-chains hung wherever it would be tasteful. The main rooms of the house, at least, were so warm and inviting looking that Harry almost forgot where he was and who he was there with several times in the one minute he had to look around while the Lestranges got their bearings. Still, he was only there for about five minutes before Lucius—almost politely, compared to the treatment Harry would have expected from Bellatrix or Rodolphus—ushered him into a bedroom on the second floor.

He had no objections to this. Hermione was in there.

Yet the moment he saw Hermione, she threw herself into his arms, not as a warm greeting but as a desperate plea for comfort. She was crying.

"Harry... Oh _Harry_..."

"Hermione...?"

She squeezed him tighter and he wrapped his arms around her.

"Have you heard yet?" she said into his shoulder.

Harry's heart dropped. There went his happy Christmas. He felt his robes getting wet from her tears.

"Heard what?"

"Ne—Wait." She took a deep breath, but didn't let go of him. "First thing's first, Harry: Did Voldemort rape you?"

Harry's heart dropped. "What?" he said.

Hermione tried to brush the tears from her eyes, but with very little success since she hadn't quite stopped crying. "Snape he didn't, but Bella said—"

"Don't believe anything Bellatrix says!" Harry said. He spoke the words quickly and at a bit higher a volume than he really should have, but after a quiet moment when Lucius did _not_ rush back into the room to threaten him, Harry decided he'd gotten away with it.

Voldemort. Rape. Sex. Did she know? Harry would fucking _die_ if she knew... but she didn't know. She'd asked if Voldemort had _raped_ him, not if he'd had sex with Voldemort. Harry didn't even have to lie when he answered her. "No," he said. "Voldemort didn't rape me."

"Really, Harry? You can tell me if—"

"He didn't, Hermione. I swear." Some very quiet voice inside of him told him he should tell her what _really_ happened, but a much, much louder voice was insisting that he should do nothing that might reveal the truth to her. She'd be completely and rightfully disgusted with him, and since that horrible lapse of judgment would _never_ happen again, there was no point in ruining his relationship with Hermione over it. "Now tell me what I haven't heard."

The relieved look that had come over Hermione's face when Harry assured her that he hadn't been raped vanished instantly. She collapsed into his chest again, holding him tightly. "Neville's dead."

"_What_?" Forget _dropping_, Harry was fairly sure that his heart actually stopped beating for several seconds. "_How_?"

Hermione reached in her pocket and produced a small roll of parchment. She handed it to Harry and went right back to crying on his shoulder. Keeping one arm around her, Harry read what turned out to be a note from Voldemort:

_Hermione,_

_You were correct, but not finished. Next time make sure that you've simplified the equation. Still, we're moving on. Below is what your final product should have looked like. Have it converted into a basic spell by Friday. Set the parameters as you like and start easy. We'll make adjustments as needed later._

Harry's eyes skimmed over a very long line of equations that, in the muggle world, he'd have thought was something from a calculus book.

_~The Dark Lord_

_P.S. The Longbottom boy is dead. Apparently he wasn't as careful as he should have been with his gardening. Stupid boy. It seemed like something you'd want to know._

Harry's head was spinning. He actually had to half-carry Hermione over to the bed and sit down. He stared at the note blankly for a minute straight, then reread it in case he'd missed some crucial part that would make it all logical or reveal that Voldemort was lying.

_The Longbottom boy is dead._

Harry blinked.

_The Longbottom boy is dead._

This was a nightmare. Yet he could feel Hermione's tears wetting his robes. Still, if some rain leaked in from the window, his imagination might be going along with it. He blinked harder in another attempt to wake himself up, but to no avail. He slipped the note to between his pointer and middle finger, reached over, and pinched the arm that was still wrapped around Hermione. He remained where he was in a Malfoy Manor guest bedroom. He heard laughter from one of the other rooms and felt sick to his stomach.

_The Longbottom boy is dead._

_Apparently he wasn't as careful as he should have been with his gardening. Stupid boy._

"What?" Harry said. He felt the word slip from between his lips and felt embarrassed for a moment.

Hermione pulled away from him and glared at him. "Didn't you read it? It said that Neville is—"

"That he should have been more carefully with his _gardening_."

Hermione stopped speaking immediately.

Harry read the lines again at half his normal reading speed. _Apparently he wasn't as careful as he should have been with his gardening. Stupid boy._It said what Harry thought it did. Voldemort had really told Hermione, and by proxy Harry, that Neville had died in a _gardening_ accident, and he really seemed to expect them to believe it.

"If there was only one thing in this world that Neville was definitely _not_ stupid about, it was Herbology. Hermione, something isn't right here."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Harry," Hermione said, sniffling and drying her eyes. "Neville did keep a lot of very dangerous plants near him. It's entirely possible that he just... got in a bit over his head."

"Will you listen to yourself? _Neville_, get in over his head? He has the self-confidence of a flubber-worm even about things he's good at."

"Had," Hermione said. "If Voldemort says he's dead—"

"He's probably dead, yes. Voldemort has no reason to lie to us _now_. But I don't like what we're being told about the circumstances..." Harry sighed. "If only there was some way for me to get around this fucking vow and for us to sneak out and see for ourselves what happened."

There was another echo of the family in the other room laughing. Hermione chewed her lip for a moment.

"What if we _don't_ go around the vow?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Don't even think about it, Hermione. Rodolphus is _not_ going to give me permission—"

"I was actually thinking about going over Rodolphus' head."

What she was suggesting was so absurd that Harry actually didn't understand it until Hermione nodded to a corner where a owl was perched quietly in an old, open cage. It was a golden color, as far as Harry could tell, but it was as covered in dark brown spots as Charlie Weasley was in freckles. Its wide, beautiful yellow eyes stared back at Harry apathetically for a moment, then it returned to cleaning its wings.

"That's Voldemort's owl. Or, it's the owl that he always sends me messages with, at least. I suppose he must have a number of them. He never leaves without my reply..." Hermione sniffled again and wiped away a tear that had escaped. "Maybe if I do really well on that spell and... just sort of a drop a little note in the reply to him that you and I were hoping to give Neville's grandmother our condolences in person, he'd..."

Harry nodded. He wasn't going to count on it, but in truth he had absolutely no other plans of his own. Maybe Voldemort would be feeling generous after slicing Harry up like potions ingredients and then fucking his brains out. A number of those cuts _still_ hadn't completely healed. And if Hermione did really well on the spell, and Harry was certain she would do, he might consider it an easy way to reward her. Relaying on the_Voldemort's_ good will did not seem like a good idea, but Harry had no idea to break the vow again. There was no doubt in his mind that if he _did_break the vow a second time, Voldemort wouldn't be nearly so lenient on him as to just lock him in a room for twenty-four hours and let that be the end of it. "It couldn't hurt to try, could it?"

"Is... Is he in a good mood today?"

"Could you get it done today?"

"I think so. Is he in a good mood?"

Harry took a deep breath and reached out to the horcrux. He did not make a habit of doing that, but he understood why Hermione had asked and he agreed that it was a fairly relevant question. At first, all he felt was a strange... emptiness. Not quite as though Voldemort _wasn't there_, but certainly as though he didn't want to be.

"No," Harry said. "He's... I suppose he's in a rather sour mood, but really he's not in much of _any_ mood. I don't think he's ever liked holidays much. He's just hoping he'll be left alone."

"So today probably isn't a good day."

Harry shrugged. "Honestly, I think he's a bit _more_ likely to be cruel when he's happy, as a rule... or maybe he's just more likely to be happy when he's being cruel. I'm not quite sure... but I don't think his dislike of this day will really change his answer. He might even like being able to busy himself with checking your work. Just be careful that you don't wish him a happy Christmas or anything, or he'll tell us no and use a cursed howler to do it."

Hermione nodded. "Alright. Get the spell right and don't wish him a happy Christmas. That won't be so hard." She forced a weak smile. "I intended to get the spell right anyway and I particularly _want_ him to have a happy Christmas."

Harry managed a small laugh. Hermione turned and walked over to a desk in the corner, where there was already a large tome open. She sat down and began to read carefully. Harry was left to sit quietly on her bed and try to clear his spinning head. He found himself reaching again for his link to Voldemort. He wanted to share in Voldemort's emptiness for a little while. Harry loved Neville dearly, but he was not going to be found collapsed on Hermione's bed in tears on Christmas morning. There was something very rock-bottom about that, and Bellatrix would _never_ let him live it down.

He found it was easier to connect with Voldemort now that the horcrux had been 'solidified.' That was the _only_ noticeable side effect, aside from perhaps his sudden sexual tension with Voldemort. It was nice to think that that was a side effect of the solidification, anyway. Truthfully, Harry was pretty skeptical. It wasn't like he _loved_ Voldemort now or anything. Far from it. Nothing would make him happier than for the man to drop dead right that moment, and it really did bother him that, prophesy or no, he was completely incapable of doing anything to help his side of the war achieve that end. He would _love_ for someone else to come along and do it, but that hope was little comfort on a day like this. Neville was dead. Dumbledore was dead. Kingsley was dead. Remus? Harry didn't know, but his hopes weren't high.

He glanced over at Voldemort's owl and though, for the first time in years, about Hedwig. He'd let her go. It had been the only thing he _could_ do. He couldn't take her with him on the camping trip from Hell in Albania.

Fucking _Albania_. Three years, and they'd come out with nothing to show for it. Harry had been ready to _leave_, too, when the muggle-born wizards and witches who'd captured them came into the picture. Honestly, they'd been easier to find than normal because Hermione had started to remove their protection wards, thinking that they could survive _one night_, and then everything crashed around. And now _Harry_ was the thing that he'd been hunting for all of these years.

_Harry Hunting._

Harry smirked despite himself. What he _really_ should have done was bring Dudley along on the trip. At least one of the horcruxes would have been destroyed ages ago.

He wondered if Dudley was still alive. If Kingsley wasn't, he doubted it. Still, he could always hope that the Order members who'd taken the Dursleys under their protection had managed to get them out of the country. It was nice to think that his relatives were probably leading happy lives in South Africa or something now. It was _nice_ to think that. Even in spite of everything they'd done to him.

Unlike Neville, who was lying cold in the ground. Because of a _gardening accident_. What did that even mean? Had he been eaten by some kind of horrible magical Venus Fly Trap? Had he been strangled by Devil's Snare? Had he been stabbed by some exotic thing that shot needles for protection? Voldemort did know how to be maddeningly vague.

Why had he even told Hermione in the note? _'It seemed like something you'd want to know.'_ He was torturing her. At the absolute _best_, he was using the opportunity to test her; He wanted to know that she'd still obey him even under incredible distress. It was that simple. Neville was _dead_, and if Voldemort didn't find it _funny_ then he found it incredibly convenient.

Harry took a deep breath. No crying. He _would not_ be caught crying on Christmas by the Lestranges. Anyway, if he cried, Hermione would want to come comfort him, and her attention needed to be on her assignment. Every few minutes she would give a clearly distressed moan, so Harry didn't think it was going well. If she was going to finish tonight, and have it done _well_, Harry couldn't take her attention away from the task at hand.

Harry could smell a delicious dinner cooking below when Hermione nervously announced herself done. She didn't take her eyes off her work once on her way to the owl, and for a moment when she paused before the owl Harry thought she was going to change her mind about sending it off.

"Hermione," Harry said, "It's... It's not the end of the world if we can't go today. You can always send it off tomorrow, or anytime before Friday, and just ask to go yourself. I wouldn't—"

"Do you think _I_ want to go by myself?" Hermione said, turning to Harry and gripping her reply to Voldemort very tightly for a moment. The owl gave a small indignant hoot, his first noise of the night.

"It's better that you get to go yourself than that he tells us no."

"I'm going either way, Harry," Hermione said. She met Harry's eyes, and even though they were still bloodshot from crying, they were stern. "The only things in question right now are whether or not you're going with me and whether or not I'm going to be in trouble for going. If I wait until tomorrow your chances of being allowed to go with me are considerably lessened."

Harry nodded. "If you're sure."

"I am sure." She took a deep breath. "And I'm _right_. Or, at least, as right as I'm going to be. I've checked over every step at least a dozen times now. If I'm wrong right now, I'm going to be wrong tomorrow."

"Alright, then."

Hermione looked uncertain again for half a second, then she turned and quickly attached the letter to the owl's leg, opened her window, and sent the owl off into the rainy sky.

Then she sat down on her bed next to Harry and wrapped her arms around him.

"Hermione, I'm fine."

She held him tighter.

"Hermione..."

He was not going to cry on Christmas. He _was not_. It was fucking Christmas.

It was fucking _Christmas_ and they were being held prisoner—albeit in a gilded cage if Harry had ever seen one. Hermione's room was a fully-furnished guest bedroom, and from the look of things, the Malfoy treated their guests very well—in Malfoy Manor, mourning the completely illogical death of one of their oldest friends. They didn't know where Ron was. Hermione didn't know where her _parents_ were.

Neville Longbottom, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Albus Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Cedric Diggory, Neville's parents, Ron's uncles, Harry's parents...

Harry couldn't stop the tears. He laid on Hermione's bed and clung to her for dear life, crying. He cried for the deaths in his past, for the pain of the present, and for the hopelessness of the future, and got what seemed like ages he tried and failed to get all of the tears out of his system. He hadn't allowed himself to cry since Dumbledore's death, and he'd been _sixteen_ then. He'd come close to crying the day that he'd let Hedwig go, but... Merlin, _Hedwig_. He cried for Hedwig, and then he cried even harder for how pathetic he felt. Hermione's thin arms around him never loosened their grip, though apparently Hermione had used up all of her own tears. This went on until an elf (and Harry was unspeakably relieved that it wasn't any of the Malfoys or Lestranges, though he hadn't really expected it to be) brought them two well-filled plates of food. Harry dried his eyes and the two of them enjoyed what turned out to actually be a rather tasty dinner. Harry could only assume that it was a fluke that no one had remembered to tell the elf to prepare something horrible for Harry and Hermione on the side, and they'd gotten the same dinner as everyone else. The elf even reappeared once to ask them if they wanted more.

They ate in near silence. Though they were both desperate for the other's company, they didn't particularly feel they needed to say anything to each other at that point. There was no conversation they could have that wouldn't either simply serve to get them _both_ crying again, or be completely forced and shallow.

Voldemort's owl returned at the same moment that the owl arrived with hot plates of pie. Hermione abandoned her food immediately and rushed to the window. Harry had almost thanked the elf, but at the last moment remembered Dobby's reaction to such things and decided it was best not to say anything. Still, he made a point of smiling at her when she grabbed his plate.

It only seemed to make her uneasy.

Harry joined Hermione over by the window as she quickly let the dripping owl in and pulled the letter off it's leg. She stared it for a moment, and when she brought her finger to the seal on the envelope she realized her hand was shaking. "Oh, Harry you do it! I can't." She thrust the letter at him.

Harry nodded and took it. He wasn't entirely calm himself, but he managed to get the envelope open and he began to read:

_Hermione,_

_Correct, but you__again__set the initial parameters to yourself. I believe I've warned you before about the dangers of that. No less, I suppose I told you to do what was easy for you. (Though I can't imagine why you thought__you__would be easy. You're a head shorter than anyone you're likely to cast the spell on will be.) Adjust it to work on Lucius. Because you got the last one done so quickly, let's make the deadline for this one this coming__Thursday__._

_You may go, but Harry is to report back to Rodolphus absolutely no later than 9:00 tonight, and under absolutely no circumstances is Harry allowed in Longbottom's garden._

_~The Dark Lord_

"We can go!" Harry said. "Only I have to be back before nine... and there are some new instructions for you."

Hermione stared back at him blankly for a second before she seemed to recall what they were talking about. "Wonderful! Let's go now. Should we leave a note in case they come to check on us?"

"I'll just leave the letter from Voldemort here..." Harry said, placing it carefully on her bed. "If they miss it, they'd miss any note we might leave."


	6. Chapter 6

Title: Last Chance  
><span>Author:<span> Dragon_of_Venus  
><span>Pairings:<span> Voldemort/Harry  
><span>Rating (Fic):<span> NC-17  
><span>Rating (Chapter):<span> NC-17  
><span>Word-Count (Fic):<span> 35,000-40,000  
><span>Word-Count (Chapter):<span> 5,067  
><span>Master List:<span> Here.  
><span>Summary:<span> AU after Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort is in control of the wizarding world. Harry is captured and placed under Voldemort's protection because of the horcrux.  
><span>Warnings (Fic):<span> Discussions of rape, graphic attempted rape (not in the main pairing), suicide, character death, slurs, sexual harassment, abductions, history of violence within the main pairing, mentions of hate crimes and torture.  
><span>Warnings (Chapter):<span> Discussions of character death/suicide, sadomasochism, poisoning for sexual pleasure, snakes being involved in sexual activities (not bestiality), one character "convincing" an at first reluctant character to come to bed wit him.  
><span>Contains:<span> Consensual sex between adults, BDSM, masturbation, voyerism, Voldemort-wins AU.  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> Harry Potter and all related characters, settings, and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling, not to me. I receive no money for writing this or any other Harry Potter related piece.  
><span>Author's Note:<span> Wow! The penultimate chapter! I'll be writing the last one on the road today (Don't worry. I won't be driving. :l) and hopefully you'll have it tomorrow morning, but you might have to wait until night for once. It depends on circumstances largely outside of my control. Anyway, enjoy!

* * *

><p>They'd never even considered the possibility that Augusta Longbottom might not be home until they were ringing her doorbell, but this did not turn out to be a problem. The elderly woman answered the door, not in the dress, hat, and handbag that Neville had described during their third-year, but pajamas, with gray hair sticking out at all number of odd angles. She stared at Harry and Hermione for a moment with blank eyes.<p>

Harry's throat went dry. He wanted to say something, but he didn't know what. For a very long time they just stared at each other. Harry knew she knew who he was, and for some reason he couldn't understand he felt _guilty_ about that.

"Hap—" Hermione started, then she too failed. After another quiet second, she said "We're really sorry, Mrs. Longbottom."

Mrs. Longbottom nodded once.

"We... we were wondering if you could tell us what happened to Neville... or let us look around. We don't really believe what we've been told."

Mrs. Longbottom was quiet for another minute, and her hand shifted on the door in such a way that Harry suspected for a moment that she was going to slam it in their faces. He wasn't sure what they'd do if she did so.

She didn't. "Come in, then," she said. She immediately turned and vanished into her dark house. "And do it quickly! You're letting the cold in!"

Harry and Hermione squeezed through the door together, and quickly kicked off their snowy boots. Harry hadn't brought a traveler's cloak, since he hadn't expected to need to go outside at all that day, but Hermone quickly took hers off and hung it on the nearby coat rack. Mrs. Longbottom took a seat in a large armchair in the living room just to their left, without turning on any lights. Harry walked after her and sat down on the sofa across from her. In the darkness, he could make out a Christmas tree with presents underneath it, and he felt almost guilty about his earlier pity-party regarding his own state. He may not have been in the best of positions, and he may have been friends with Neville as well, but his wasn't nearly the worst Christmas anyone in the wizarding world was having that year. Hermione joined Harry shortly and looked from the tree to Harry with the same understanding in her eyes.

Mrs. Longbottom sat in her chair and stared at them quietly for a very long time. Harry and Hermione subjected themselves to this quietly, neither of them looking at the other or quite at Mrs. Longbottom, as her gaze was painful to hold and communicating with each other too much seemed somehow disrespectful. Harry resisted his urge to sink down in his seat and fidgeted as little as he could for several minutes. Eventually, Mrs. Longbottom opened her mouth, but when Harry perked up to hear what she was going to say, she seemed to change her mind. This happened several times before she finally spoke:

"I'm sorry, children, but..." Harry could hear her staged breath even from several feet away, "...It's too soon. Here. Take this..." She held out a roll of parchment to them that Harry realized she must have had in her hand that entire time. Hermione retrieved it and sat next to Harry again before unrolling it.

_Dear Gran,_

I'm sorry, but I can't do this. I won't go on any more raids, I won't go to anymore Death Eater meetings, and I won't live in a country controlled by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I'm sorry. But I know you don't want me to, either. But I also won't let them hurt you, and as long as I'm alive they'll try to use you to get to me. My only hope for you is to end my own life. Then they'll leave you alone. You should probably let them think this is an accident. I'll do my best to make it look like one. I'm worried if they know the truth they'll harass you out of spite or something.

You'll be alright, because you'll have Uncle Algie and Aunt Enid.

I'm sorry.

Love,  
>~Neville.<p>

Hermione drew in a long, pained breath next to Harry's ear. Harry himself felt... empty, because he could understand how Neville could have made this choice and yet at the same time he couldn't. He read the note repeatedly, just as he read the letter from Voldemort that had first alerted them of Neville's death repeatedly. Neville's handwriting was so shaky... yet he seemed to have worded the note rather carefully. He'd probably been thinking about it for a while.

He'd been thinking about killing himself for a while. And he'd done it on Christmas. Harry didn't believe it. Though intellectually he knew that it was true, emotionally it simply wouldn't register. Neville had never been anything but a survivor, facing Snape and the Slytherins and a million other challenges every day at school for seven years... but Voldemort had been more than he could handle.

Voldemort was more than a lot of people could handle.

Harry stood and dashed down the hallway until he found the bathroom, then he vomited into the toilet. Neville had killed himself because of a man that Harry had slept with. While Harry was off spreading his legs for the Dark Lord, Neville had been plotting his own suicide, and it was all Harry's fault because Harry failed—

He threw up again. In the silence after he'd done so he heard his breaths coming in and out like sobs.

Happy fucking Christmas. It seemed utterly inconceivable that there were people out there enjoying this day. That Draco had a fiancée and had sat down to dinner with her and his aunt and was going on with a happy little life as though everything was fine with the world when it wasn't. That _decent_ people were probably doing their best to celebrate this holiday in spite of the terror they were living under, so long as they were pure-blooded and they had that privilege under Voldemort's regime.

Harry's stomach flipped, and he threw up a third time, for good measure. So much for a good Christmas dinner.

He heard footsteps behind him and assumed it was Hermione coming to check on him, but instead when he turned around he found Mrs. Longbottom standing there with some tissue paper. Without asking for permission or even giving Harry the chance to take the tissue paper himself, she bent down and wiped his mouth clean, tossed the tissue paper in the toilet, and flushed it.

"Do you think you're done now?"

Harry nodded. She held out a hand and helped him to his feet.

"Thank you," he said.

She nodded. "Neville was so fond of you two..." She shook her head.

"May... May we see where it happened?"

She broke off another few sheets of tissue paper to dry her tears and shook her head. "There's nothing to see. He.. he just gave himself this nice little cut on his hand and went out to tend to his plants..." She trembled violently for a moment, and Harry pulled her into a hug as much to support her as to comfort her. "...And he never came back in." Harry rocked her slowly for a moment, and he felt so much weight on him that for at least a minute solid he was sure he was supporting all of both of their weight. Finally, she straightened again. "He was always at his best around his plants. When he wanted the aconite, I'd never imagined..." Harry prepared himself for her to collapse again, but she didn't. Instead, she calmly led Harry and Hermione back into the living room.

"Happy Christmas," she said, and there was a finality to this statement that made it clear to Harry and Hermione that Mrs. Longbottom wanted to be alone.

"Are you going to be alright, Mrs. Longbottom?" Hermione said.

Mrs. Longbottom sighed. "My brother will be back soon... Yes, I imagine I'll be alright. You're sweet children, and it does my heart a bit of good to know that Neville had friends intelligent and concerned enough to look into this, but I'm afraid there's no more you can do."

"We're very sorry for your loss," Harry said. "We should have seen the signs—"

"We all missed the signs, Harry," Mrs. Longbottom said, startling Harry a bit by addressing him by name for the first time that night. "And no one has less excuse to have done so than I do. Don't you dare blame yourself. It won't end well, and this country can't lose anymore good children."

Harry decided not to tell her how woefully unlikely it was that this country was ever going to lose him. He wasn't certain he counted as 'good' anymore anyway. He looked to Hermione with an unspoken question about wards around Malfoy Manor, and she answered him by grabbing him and side-apparating him back.

The letter on the bed was undisturbed. No one seemed to even realize that they had left.

The owl hooted happily to see them return, and Harry glared at it.

"Can I send a letter to Voldemort?" he said.

Hermione hesitated, but nodded.

Harry helped himself to her stationary and, pressing so hard that at first he nearly broke through the parchment, wrote:

_I fucking hate you. Neville's dead and it's your fault. Everyone's dead or gone and it's your fault. I'm stuck forever carrying around your soul (which I otherwise wouldn't believe you had) and it's your fault. This world is fucking shit, and it's your fault. Maybe I can't kill you, but I hope you die._

_~Harry Potter_

He sighed. That had been cathartic to write, but Voldemort would only find it funny, if anything. He wanted to write something that would actually bother the bastard. After a moment of thought, he added:

_P.S.: Happy Christmas. It's horrible when you can't spend the holidays with your family. I know you miss your daddy as much as I do. The only difference is that mine didn't abandon me by choice._

That was a little better. That might actually _hurt_ Voldemort, and even though it was a low blow and Harry had so often been furious at Malfoy for insulting orphans, Harry couldn't feel bad about it. Honestly, since Voldemort had killed his father, it was technically _Voldemort's fault_ that he'd been an orphan. Surely that meant that the rules were different.

Harry sent the letter off and then flopped down next to Hermione on her bed. She was laying with a book open, naturally, but Harry noticed that her eyes weren't moving across the page. She was lost in her mind, and Harry saw no cause to disturb her. He put his head down in his arms and laid there with his upset stomach and vomit-flavored mouth until he heard a screech as the owl returned less than an hour later.

That seemed to shake Hermione out of her thoughts, and her eyes began to move across the page. Harry stood up and got his letter from the owl, reaching out again to the horcrux and smiling slightly when he felt Voldemort's irritation.

_Harry,_

_You sound upset. You probably should talk to someone about that, but I have no idea why you thought__I__was a good choice. Next time, just grab a garden snake. Keep them warm and they're great listeners._

_~The Dark Lord Voldemort_

P.S.: Our fathers did have a lot in common, including the fact that they were both murdered by me. If you don't calm down, someone else's father might be murdered by me, too, and I don't think Ronald would appreciate that. Have a very happy Christmas.

Harry let out a frustrated grunt. Hermione looked up from her reading, but she didn't say anything and neither did Harry. Harry again helped himself to her stationary, but realized a moment before he started writing that Voldemort had probably been serious about Arthur Weasley. He took a deep breath before he wrote.

_I don't want to talk to you._

That was all. He didn't even sign it. He just rolled it up, tied it to the owl's leg, and sent it off to Voldemort. Then he sat next to Hermione again, feeling only very slightly better for his outburst, and watched the second hand move around the clock on Hermione's wall a few times, trying to keep his mind clear and just cling to a feeling of emptiness that didn't quite hurt as badly as his self-loathing or crippling depression did.

"The Malfoys know how to keep a party going," Harry said. "Reckon the Lestranges will spend the night here?"

Hermione was quiet for so long that Harry didn't think he'd heard her, but just when he was going to repeat himself, she shook her head. "We're not that lucky, Harry."

Harry chuckled, but it was true. "You're probably right. Bellatrix and Narcissa are the only ones who seem to particularly like each other, anyway."

"Hm?" Hermione looked up from her book.

Harry shrugged. "I've just got the feeling that Rodolphus doesn't like Draco very much. They always look really awkward around each other."

"He's probably jealous."

"Of Draco?"

"No, _for_ Draco. These pure-blood families don't take their dynasties lightly, Harry. In any case," she smiled darkly, "It seems like a very trivial thing for you to be worrying about, giving present circumstances."

Harry shrugged. "What would you have me worry about? At least you've got arithmancy to do. I'm stuck in Lestrange Manor all day listening to the radio and playing wizards chess with myself."

"Yes, Harry," Hermione said with a sigh, "There is nothing I love more than doing Voldemort's maths for him."

"Not the grand intellectual excessive he made it out to be?"

"Oh, I'm learning loads, but I'm rather concerned with _he's_ doing with the fruits of my labor. My first task was to turn water to blood, and I didn't think much of it until a bit more reader showed me that if my math was right, he could adjust it to work in reverse as well."

Harry's stomach turned slightly. At least having your blood turned to water was likely to be a _quick_ death. "Sorry," he said.

There was a squeal from downstairs that turned into a laugh after a minute.

Harry smirked. "Yup. It's Pansy."

"What?"

"Draco's fiancée."

"Oh," Hermione shifted to a new position on her bed. "Yes. You have no idea what a _joy_ it's been to see her again."

Harry snorted. "I'd share a bunk-bed with Pansy if it'd get me away from Bella. Want to trade?"

Before Hermione could answer, there was a hoot as Voldemort's owl flew back in through the window. For a moment, Harry thought that it was just there to wait for Hermione to finish her next assignment, but then he noticed a letter tied to it's leg.

Harry took it. Voldemort had torn Harry's note off and replied on the same parchment. His even shorter message read:

_I can tell._

Harry didn't even bother to tear the parchment. He simply scratched out Voldemort's letter and wrote just two words in reply:

_Fuck you._

He sent it off and returned to the bed with Hermione. They spent as long as they could bear to trying to force a casual conversation, but_everything_—Christmas, Ron, their lives for the last few weeks, Hogwarts, Albania, Voldemort, books—was painful until they finally settled on comparing the weather they'd both been dealing with, in tedious detail until they decided that things had been worse in Wiltshire.

Then Voldemort apparated into the room.

Hermione jumped, but Harry just blinked. He wondered for the second time that day if he was dreaming.

Voldemort smiled. "Harry, how would you like to spend Christmas night with me?"

Harry didn't say anything. He wouldn't like that at all. The _last_ thing he wanted was to be around the man who had as much as murdered Neville and thousands of others.

Voldemort sighed, grabbed him, and apparated him back into his bedroom.

_"You again..."_ Nagini hissed immediately.

Harry ignored her and pulled quickly away from Voldemort. "I said I didn't want to talk to you!"

"No," Voldemort said. "You want to fuck me."

"What?"

Voldemort rolled his eyes. "Come now, Harry. You don't think that horcrux link only goes one way, do you?"

Harry looked away.

"If we're going to do this, let's do it quickly. While it is... _fun_ to torture you a bit, and I won't refuse you when you want it, I really don't have much time for your childishness tonight."

"I do _not_ want to fuck you!" Harry said, backing further away from Voldemort. "I hate you. I'm furious with you... even _more_ furious with you than I usually am—"

"_No_, Harry, you're afraid of me." Voldemort said simply. "You may not have to fear that I'll kill you anymore, though on some emotional level I think you still do fear that—Stupid boy—but you fear that I'll ruin your life forever, as, as you made a point of pointing out, I've already got a good start on. You fear that one way or another I'll take what few friends you have left from you, and then I'll take a few complete strangers just to spite you. And you might be right. You're _probably_ right, in fact... Do you feel that, Harry? The way your blood turns to ice when I say that? That isn't hate. That's fear. Your mentor always said that there are worse things than death in this world, and you believed him even if I never did. And now you're living that, watching all of those unspoken fears come true, and there is _nothing_ you can do to stop them, and you are _terrified_." Voldemort sighed. "And you fuck me when you're terrified, because you're desperate for some illusion of control over all of this. It does you good to think that you _allow_ me to hurt you, so until you're ready to make that allowance, I'll be finishing up some plans."

Harry's stomach turned. It was true. From the ice in his veins to the odd desire that he really _did_ have to have Voldemort's attention and to have Voldemort _listen_ to him and to just have that tiny bit of control over what was going on in his life, for the very first time in his life. There was something oddly healing about being bitten and cut and fucked by Voldemort and coming out of it all and realizing that he was still alive and still quite safe and that, in this one thing if no other thing, Voldemort would _stop_ when Harry told him to.

Harry swore.

Voldemort chuckled.

"Am I the first one?" Harry said.

"The first one _what_?" Voldemort's eyes remained on a map that he was holding open in front of him.

"The first one... not _ever_, I guess, but the first one... like me?"

"There is _no one_ quite like you, Potter."

"Thank you."

"It wasn't a compliment. You're the most troublesome and unstable brat I've known since myself at your age."

Harry balked a bit at the comparison, but brushed it off. It was not the important thing here. "No... I mean, am I the first person to come to you for... for this reason?"

"Yes. You're a freak, Harry Potter."

"I know," Harry said without thinking. It was a reflex left over from years of abuse at the hands of Uncle Vernon. The word 'freak' didn't even hold any particular sting for Harry anymore. It really just made Harry wish even more desperately that Voldemort would look up from that fucking map and throw Harry onto the bed.

Voldemort did not look up from the map, but there was a very pointed silence for a minute. Harry wondered for a moment if Voldemort was going to ask him about... about the Dursleys... about anything... and he actually took a few steps back, physically retreating from the idea. He had fucked Voldemort, but he was _not_ going to share that part of his past with Voldemort, if Voldemort didn't already know about it. (Harry's heart sank slightly to realize that, as a master at legilimency and as someone who could read Harry's emotions, Voldemort had probably known the details of Harry's childhood with the Dursleys for a very long time.)

"In your defense," Voldemort said quietly, "I've never destroyed anyone else's life quite as thoroughly as I've destroyed yours. I've taken everything from you but your life itself: Your parents, your freedom, your virginity—"

"Not hardly!" Harry said. "Ginny and I—"

"Your _other_ virginity. In any case, I suppose I must accept some responsibility for you."

"I'd like it more if you'd accept considerably _less_ responsibility for me, actually," Harry said. "Let me leave and maybe I'll actually start to recover from all of this. I can handle not getting myself killed—"

"—All past evidence is to the contrary."

"Dragon shit! The closest I've come to dying since you made me take that bloody vow was at _your_ hands in _your_ bed! In fact, even going by 'past evidence,' I can't think of a single time when I nearly died and it _wasn't_ in some way your fault!"

"_Merlin_ you are insufferable..." Voldemort folded the map and put it down, then looked Harry over once. "You are _never_ getting your freedom. Put the idea out of your head. I intend to keep you where I know your life is not going to be in danger no matter what stupid hero fantasy comes over your. Your rushing off to the Longbottom residence a few hours ago only _proves_ that you haven't changed and can't be trusted with your own safety."

"Yet you brought me here specifically _because_ you were hoping you'd get the chance to endanger my life. That's _fun_ to you. It's a nice little break from your paperwork or whatever, isn't it? Some people like to drink coffee on their breaks, some people like to smoke cigarettes, and some people like to nearly kill their horcrux vessel, who by the way is half a century younger, you pervert."

Voldemort nodded. "Indeed, Harry. I can't deny that I find your pained cries rather relaxing..."

"Endanger my life," Harry said, disrobing quickly for dramatic effect. "I dare you... In fact," deciding that if he was going to do this, he'd best do it right, he dropped to his knees and crawled toward Voldemort. "I _beg_ you."

Voldemort smiled. "Don't ask for things you don't really want, Harry."

"I'm not."

"Harry, I will do it..."

"Then do it!"

Voldemort glanced briefly at something behind Harry before his eyes returned to Harry and his hand buried itself in Harry's hair. Harry was dragged brutally upward and backward, and he scrambled and failed to keep up with the movement, hissing as sharp pain after sharp pain ran through his skull while Voldemort pulled his hair, until he was over by the bed. Voldemort didn't have the physical strength to actually throw Harry onto the bed, but Harry knew what was expected of him and quickly climbed onto the bed.

"Still Hufflepuff?" Harry said, hearing his breath come out in pants.

"'Hufflepuff' or you passing out. Whichever comes first."

"You'll stop if I pass out?"

"You are still my horcrux, Harry. I do not want you dead." Voldemort said as he tugged Harry's pants off, leaving Harry naked on the edge of the bed with a racing heart. Voldemort waved his wand once and shackled Harry to the bed, then quickly disrobed and joined Harry on it. Harry took a deep breath and relaxed as Voldemort prepared for whatever danger he was going to put Harry's life in—He certainly couldn't use the Unforgivable Curse—and Harry noticed that the mirror on the ceiling was back. Voldemort wanted him to have a good view of himself throughout this. Fucking bastard.

_"Nagini,"_ Voldemort hissed, _"Come here. Help me with this..."_

Harry swallowed hard. What was Nagini going to do?

He felt her on his skin before he had too much time to think on it. Harry had never been particularly afraid of snakes, but actually having one—or, perhaps, _this_ one—crawl over his bare leg gave him rather unpleasant tingles. He moved his leg slightly and, were it not for the shackles, might have kicked her off. As it was, he could only lie there and watch in the mirror above as she slithered up to his chest and paused just below his nipple.

Voldemort casually pushed Harry's head to the side, thought about this for a second and changed his mind, then adjusted it again until he was facing the ceiling.

"So why are _you_ allowed to endanger the horcrux when I'm not?"

"It's my horcrux and I know when to stop," Voldemort said, glaring at Harry. "I don't want to hear another word out of you unless that word is 'Hufflepuff.'"

Voldemort ran his fingers from Nagini's head down the first few inches of her body, as though he were petting a dog. Nagini looked huge next to Harry's scrawny leg, and she wasn't even completely on the bed.

_"Bite him,"_ Voldemort said in a completely steady voice.

Harry had about one second to panic before it happened.

He _saw_ the fangs sink into his neck before he felt them. He watched himself, Voldemort, and Nagini all waiting calmly, and then Nagini moved_very_ quickly, Harry jumped, and there were fangs in his neck. For half of a second, he was surprised by the complete lack of pain.

Then he wanted to die. Nagini's venom rushed into his neck quickly and brutally, lighting his blood on fire and making it instantly hard to breathe. Harry thrashed and screamed as loudly as he could, but it was to no avail. Voldemort did not stop the poison or even tell Nagini to get off him. Harry continued to thrash and scream, feeling the horrible burning as the poison ran through his veins, down his collar bone... in that horrible moment when it got to his heart, there was a horrible pain all through his chest, and it did not go away when the venom began to be pumped by the heart into the other areas of Harry's body. His vitals were shutting down. He couldn't breath, even though he could scream. Voldemort's bites on the other side of Harry's neck were like bug-bites, if that. Black clouds were swarming around the edges of Harry's vision, getting bigger and bigger until Harry wouldn't be able to see anymore...

And then it all stopped, very suddenly. The burning in Harry's blood vanish, and his heart gave one last painful pump before returning it its duties as normal, though at a somewhat faster pace. Harry looked into the mirror to find Nagini's fangs still buried in his neck, but she was apparently not releasing any more venom. Harry saw Voldemort lift his wand off his chest.

And _now_ he was rather aware of the sharp stings from Voldemort's bite marks on his neck, but those hardly seemed worth any attention after nearly being poisoned to death. Harry had a lot more sympathy for Nagini's screaming rabbit now.

_"That's enough, Nagini,"_ Voldemort said.

The fangs came out of Harry's neck, and Harry hissed as oxygen touched his nerves in the two sharp puncture wounds her fangs had left. She obviously hadn't hit anything important, and Harry was quite certain that was by design, so there was only really the pain to be concerned with. Though blood did start bubbling out instantly, it wasn't an alarming amount. When she slithered off his body, Harry didn't bother to suppress his shudder. Voldemort seemed to take quite a bit of delight in that.

Harry let out a sigh that nearly turned into a sob. "Fuck you," he said. Yet the pleasant tingling was back. He had dived head-first in the psychological ocean that was Voldemort, and he hadn't drowned. He was safe. Everything had gone exactly as he'd planned for it to.

Voldemort chuckled. "No. The other way around, I think." The shackles around Harry's ankles vanished, and Harry allowed his legs to be pushed up. When Voldemort pushed brutally into him with almost no lubrication, Harry barely grunted. His head was still spinning simply because he was_alive_. The lines of blood from his neck only proved that.

Voldemort fucked him fast and hard for a moment, and Harry began to find a bit of pleasure beneath, or perhaps even within, all of the pain and let out the occasional moan. He felt as though he'd already came, though there was no mess to be found on the sheets or on Harry's body that would indicate this. Harry's whole body was limp and satisfied. It was merely a matter of allowing Voldemort to take his pleasure, and Harry gladly did so for several minutes until he felt Voldemort's wand pressed to his chest.

He blinked a few times, though he knew very well what he was seeing. It seemed rather pointless to even _have_ a safe word at that point, because Harry was feeling as though he could survive anything.

"Crucio," Voldemort said.

Pain every bit as intense as the venom but of an entirely different sort rushed at Harry from all angles at once. The sharp pain of having every individual nerve in his body torn open with a tiny magically knife and stuffed with salt was nothing new, though, and it lacked all of the grotesque horror of being bitten by Nagini. When Voldemort came into Harry's writing body, stopped the curse, and pulled out, Harry couldn't even work up the energy to swear at the man. He remained where he was, panting, as the chains vanished. The mirror stayed.

Voldemort stood up, casually threw a blanket over Harry's lower regions, but still left his neck, covered in bite marks and two small black holes where Nagini's fangs had punctured him, clearly visible and bloody.

"Happy Christmas, Harry," Voldemort said. "Get some sleep."

Harry's last thought as he dozed off was that he was going to completely despise himself in the morning.


	7. Chapter 7

Title: Last Chance  
><span>Author:<span> Dragon_of_Venus  
><span>Pairings:<span> Voldemort/Harry  
><span>Rating (Fic):<span> NC-17  
><span>Rating (Chapter):<span> PG-13  
><span>Word-Count (Fic):<span> 35,000-40,000  
><span>Word-Count (Chapter):<span> 5,098  
><span>Master List:<span> Here.  
><span>Summary:<span> AU after Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort is in control of the wizarding world. Harry is captured and placed under Voldemort's protection because of the horcrux.  
><span>Warnings (Fic):<span> Discussions of rape, graphic attempted rape (not in the main pairing), suicide, character death, slurs, sexual harassment, abductions, history of violence within the main pairing, mentions of hate crimes and torture.  
><span>Warnings (Chapter):<span> Discussions of murder and torture, discussions of pairings other than the main ones, speculation on character death, and a character within the main pairing kissing someone else.  
><span>Contains:<span> Consensual sex between adults, BDSM, masturbation, voyerism, Voldemort-wins AU.  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> Harry Potter and all related characters, settings, and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling, not to me. I receive no money for writing this or any other Harry Potter related piece.  
><span>Author's Note:<span> Alright. We're done. This was by far the hardest chapter to write and I want to thank you all for joining me on this little adventure. I really appreciate all of the reviews, both the constructive ones and the ones that just encouraged me to keep going. There are some things I'm not entirely thrilled with myself about this fic, but that just means that I'll probably try again soon. :) Enjoy the last chapter!

* * *

><p>Harry sat on his bed at the Lestranges and stared at the light silver watch on Hermione's pale wrist. Ten minutes until midnight. Apparently, Christmas at the Malfoys' meant New Years at the Lestranges'. Harry and Hermione actually preferred the latter, because Harry had a radio in his room. Fortunately, this holiday had come with no additional bad new. That would have been a bit more than Hermione and Harry could handle. They were still in the earliest stages of grieving for Neville, and the grieving process was <em>not<em> being expedited by the (completely expected) lack of support from the Death Eaters in their life.

Harry could still remember talking to Rodolphus about it on Boxing Day. Harry'd been outside, again hoping that the wind and the rain would clear his head and somehow wash away the sins of the night before, when Rodolphus had slipped out. They'd looked at each other oddly for a moment, then Rodolphus had sat down next to Harry on the swing and began to roll himself a cigarette. There was an immediate unspoken agreement between them that they were just going to ignore each other until Rodolphus went back inside, and for a minute Harry sat quietly next to him and waited for him to get his smoking done and go back inside. Then a strange curiosity about how he'd react to Neville's death struck him. Before Harry had time to talk himself out of it, he said, "Neville Longbottom killed himself early yesterday morning, you know."

Rodolphus finished rolling his cigarette in silence. He stared blankly at his finished product for a moment, glanced up at Harry, and raised his eyebrows. "I think Lucius mentioned that yesterday. Light me, will you?"

Harry pulled his wand out of his pocket and did as he was told.

Rodolphus took a long drag of the cigarette, looking away from Harry. He didn't take any particular care to avoid Harry's face when he blew his smoke. "Baby Blood-Traitor's dead..." he said thoughtfully.

"Neville," Harry said. "His name was Neville."

Rodolphus chuckled. "Do you really think I don't know that? We must have heard his name fifteen times a week from the day we were arrested to the day we were sprung, and a lot more frequently than that when we first went in." He shook his head. "It was always 'Poor Neville Longbottom turned five today,' or 'Neville, the boy whose life you ruined, got top marks in Herbology,' and all this bullshit as if we actually _cared_. Half of them wanted us to feel guilty and half of them just wanted to tell us how great he was doing so we'd feel inadequate, as if ruining the _infant's_ life had ever been the _point_..." He took another drag of his cigarette. "Fucking Aurors. They _do not_ let it go when you fuck with one of them."

"If you know his name then why do you call him something else?"

"Why does it bother you so much?" Rodolphus chucked. "_That's_ about reason enough... To be honest, though, we couldn't remember his name the day we attacked his parents, so we just started calling him Baby Blood-Traitor... and it stuck, even when every Auror in England made a point of correcting us."

Harry shrugged. "You probably _should_ feel inadequate, though. I mean, sure, destroying Neville's life wasn't your goal, but you didn't even come close to accomplishing your actual goal, did you? What you should have done was—"

"Thank you, Potter," Rodolphus said. "The fourteen years I spent in Azkaban—half of which you were in nappies for—were not long enough for me to figure out my mistakes. I need a fucking kid to tell me."

"I wasn't in nappies until I was eight!" Harry had actually toilet-trained rather quickly, probably more out of survival instinct than anything else, if the Dursley's had treated changing Harry's nappies the way they treated feeding him and tending to all of his other needs. Harry only knew that Aunt Petunias guilt-trips to Harry about the days when she'd changed his nappies had often ended with the note "Thank God it stopped right after you turned two..."

Rodolphus smirked and shrugged, taking another drag of his cigarette.

Harry sighed. "So you really don't care that he's dead?"

Rodolphus' smoke few almost right into Harry's face.

"Potter, I don't care about the deaths of the people I _did_ kill. Did you honestly expect me to cry over the brat of two people that I _didn't_ kill?"

Harry shrugged. "Some people would say that what you did to Neville's parents was _worse_ than killing them."

"Some people can shut the fuck up." Another drag of the cigarette, then: "There's another one I've never heard before... What do _you_ think, Potter? Is it better to be you or to be Longbottom?"

"I thought we were discussing whether it was better to be my _parents_ or Neville's parents."

Rodolphus shrugged. "I don't think any of them particularly mind the states they're in. That's the thing about murdering people. They don't mind for very long. I don't think the Longbottoms can really mind either. I was told they considered it great progress when one of them claimed to recognize the medi-witch who'd been caring for them for ten years. I don't think there's much up there now, including minding. So, the real question is whether it's better to be the Baby Blood-Traitor or the Boy-Who-Wouldn't-Die. Which would you prefer, if you had the choice?"

Harry shrugged. "When you put it that way, there's a lot of other factors that go into it. I'd take Neville's gran over my aunt and uncle..."

Rodolphus paused. He took inhaled on his cigarette once again and studied Harry. "They were muggles, weren't they?"

"Yeah," Harry said, trying hard to make it sound neutral.

"I never understood why they did that to you." He smirked. "You 'saved' the wizarding world, and they tossed you out of it." He shook his head. "I suppose you've convinced yourself there's nothing wrong with that?"

Harry shrugged, again trying hard to make it look like he had no particularly strong feelings on the matter. Honestly, the issue wasn't that Harry'd been raised in the muggle world, the issue was that Harry had been raised in the muggle world by _those_ muggles, and for ten years of his life no one had checked up on him or seemed to care at all what became of him. Or, worse, they _had_ checked up on him, and they _had_ known about his situation, and they hadn't cared. That stung a little, sometimes. It would have been nice to have known who and what he was all his life, rather than thinking he was a freak for ten years and then having the whole truth sprung on him in one night when he was barely eleven.

"Well, that aside...?"

Harry shrugged. "I've always kind of considered Neville basically a fellow orphan. We always understood each other when it came to stuff like this... Or, at least, he understood better than most... I guess it's better when they're really dead. There's more closure this way."

Rodolphus shrugged. "Boy-Who-Wouldn't-Die it is, I guess. But I suppose now there's _no one_ to really care..."

"His gran?"

Rodolphus shrugged. "She'll be gone in a few years."

"That's pretty brutal."

"I'm a pretty brutal guy."

"I've gathered as much. Will you feel better when she's dead and there's no one left to care about your crimes?"

"I don't really feel _bad_ now."

Harry smirked. He kicked the yard slightly, pushing the swing into very slight motion. "I think you do. I think you've just felt bad for so long that you're not sure what it feels like to feel good anymore."

Rodolphus chuckled and shook his head. He let the swing rock. "I think I felt pretty damn good the day I finally got away from those fucking dementors."

"Still," Harry said, "I think somewhere within you there's this little tiny that part that feels terrible. It was there when the dementors were and it was still there when the dementors were gone. You just didn't notice because the dementors were a much bigger problem."

Rodolphus shrugged. "Were hoping that telling me about Baby Blood-Traitor's death would open my eyes to my mistakes or something?"

Harry shrugged.

Rodolphus shook his head. "I don't feel bad. I'm not even _surprised_. Weak-minded parents had a weak-minded kid. It's not exactly front-page-of-the-Prophet news."

"You had no child. Does that mean you have no mind?"

Harry had dodged Rodolphus' attempt to put his cigarette out on Harry's forehead and had dashed inside the house and up to his room. They hadn't really spoken since.

Harry slipped his hand into Hermione's and intertwined their fingers. Hermione wasn't as thin now as she was when she was first taken to the Malfoy's. They were feeding her properly, then, and that was a relief. She seemed to be doing decently enough, all things considered. Harry wasn't worried about her ending up like Neville, at least. Her parents (if they were alive) weren't in any more danger with her alive than they would be if she were dead, and Harry would probably be considerably _worse_ off. The idea of losing Hermione now was almost unbearable.

She really did seem to be gaining a certain amount of favor with Voldemort, especially now that Neville was gone. He had brought her into his office for several private lessons in how to cast spells, adjust for changes in the parameters mentally rather than completely redoing the maths, and trim out unnecessary wand movements, and her magical abilities had not gone unnoticed by her fellow Death Eaters. When she finally told Harry about her experience with Macnair, and about Snape's intervention, which was still confusing for both of them, she'd quickly followed it up with "But that hasn't been much of a problem lately..."

She'd even been allowed to write Ron one letter after Christmas. Ron had, apparently, been sent back to the Burrow and given a tedious job at the Ministry which mostly involved filing paperwork alphabetically in several filing cabinets that he'd described as "bottomless," though Hermione had been quick to point out to Harry that that wasn't practical and was likely an exaggeration on Ron's part. Ron's parents and siblings were all alive and well _enough_. His father hadn't been fired and imprisoned during Voldemort's take-over, but rather transferred to the Department of Magical Transportation. He wasn't as happy there as he had been at his old job, but it was an unspeakable relief to all of the Weasleys that he even had his life and his freedom, let alone a decent-paying job to go with them. No one was willing to complain too much.

Bill and Charlie were out of the country and probably never going to return. Harry didn't blame them for that. Bill had married Fleur in England as planned, of course, but after a few months of living under constant terror in the early days of Voldemort's regime, several surprise searches of their home, and Fleur's surprise pregnancy, Bill had made the incredibly difficult decision to leave his family a second time and take his wife and unborn daughter to Paris. According to Ron, he was happy _enough_ there. Charlie was getting very worried about the rise of the Death Eaters in Romania, but that was no cause to come home.

Percy was speaking to the family again. He'd admitted several months ago that he was wrong to mistrust Harry (and it did bring a small smile to Harry's lips to know that he was the cause of Percy admitting he was wrong for the first time in as long as Harry had known him) and he'd spent Christmas with them. He was getting married to some girl named Audrey in February. Harry was invited, officially, and the invitation came with Percy's "most sincere" apologies, but everyone involved knew that the odds of Harry actually being allowed to attend were extremely low. Fred and George still had their shop and were enjoying making Snape's life as Headmaster of Hogwarts (and _that_ still stung, even after all these years) Hell.

Ginny was dating, of course. She'd started dating again just a few months after Harry "ran away to Albania with her brother." Harry had rather mixed feelings about Ginny and Ron joking about that, but at the end of the day, it was their lives as much as it was Harry's. He didn't really have any _right_ to be upset with them. Ron had dropped some hints that she might be getting married to Seamus, but he hadn't said it outright. If that was an attempt to spare Harry's feelings, it was a rather poor attempt.

Still, it was nice to know that Seamus was alive. Harry had been worried about him, since his father was a muggle and he and his mother were blood-traitors, and Harry really didn't doubt that he'd been involved with the Order after school, just as Neville had. It was unsettling to think of him with someone who wasn't Dean, though. What had happened to Dean? Dean had no wizarding ancestry that he could prove... Harry _hoped_he'd been taken in by the muggle-born groups and that he'd fled with them.

Then there was the matter of Voldemort. Harry had thought for half a second that "Stop fucking people who killed my parents" might be a wonderful New Years resolution, but in truth he didn't have much fight left in him when it came to these urges for Voldemort. It was a very confusing year indeed when one went from being mutual mortal enemies with a man to fucking him and being under his protection. Harry had quit telling himself it wasn't going to happen again. It probably was. It had very nearly happened the next _morning_, when Voldemort woke up and found Harry's bloody body lying next to him. (Voldemort didn't sleep much, as far as Harry could tell. Harry was getting somewhat better at being able to sense through the horcrux when Voldemort was sleeping, and it only seemed to happen if Harry happened to be up at some absurd hour of the morning—between two and five, usually.) Harry's conscience (and probably his _consciousness_, and his not-quite-replenished blood supply) was only saved by an "urgent" fire-call from the ministry. Harry half-hated himself for being disappointed about that.

Harry still had very mixed feelings about his... thing... with Voldemort. He did not love Voldemort. His certainty about that matter, if no other, had never wavered. And Voldemort didn't love or even _like_ him. It wasn't flirting or even gentle teasing when Voldemort called Harry childish, a slut, or a freak, or even when he threatened Harry's loved ones. Harry was and would always be at best a nuisance to Voldemort. Voldemort would never be anything but the cold-blooded monster that murdered his parents to Harry. It was never going to be a very functional relationship.

But Harry didn't really _want_ a functional relationship for Voldemort. He wanted pain and he wanted excitement. He wanted the strange euphoria of coming closer and closer every time to death, only to be pulled out of death's arms at the absolute last second by the man who had so many times tried to send him there. If Harry wanted anything, he wanted _dysfunction_.

But it might have been about time to see if he _could_ use these flings with Voldemort to get favors from the man. "Get the fuck away from the Lestranges" still seemed like a very good New Years resolution. Bellatrix had not calmed down any since her vow to reveal Harry's fling with Voldemort and ruin him. Harry had gone up to his room after dinner one night and found the words "Truth potion in your food" carefully stitched into his pillowcase, presumably by Twoey. Harry had taken a shower and found the message cleanly removed when he returned. She still made a point of calling him a slut regularly, though usually in off-handed comments rather than in larger arguments, so Harry didn't have as much cause to respond with a comment about her own sexual feelings for her master.

Perhaps he should spare her the trouble and tell Hermione himself. Beyond Hermione, there was no one whose discovery of his affairs would Voldemort would really bother Harry. If the Death Eaters didn't judge him for sleeping with their master, they'd judge him for something else. It might as well be something that was _true_. Hermione... Hermione would forgive him, eventually. He _hoped_ she would, at least. If he were completely honest about their situation, she didn't have much choice. She had no one else. Maybe she'd understand whatever fucked up psychological needs he was fulfilling with this better than he did, and she'd help him understand. It didn't hurt to hope so.

He took a deep breath. "Hermione..."

She looked up from her watch quickly. She was quietly relieved that they weren't just going to spend the next ten minutes counting down to the new year in silence. Ten seconds would do nicely. Hermione doubted that her first calendar year as a Death Eater would be _worth_ more than ten seconds. Even if the Dark Lord was beginning to show some favoritism to her and reward her in little ways, and the other Death Eaters were largely leaving her alone, she was still spending all of her time around _Draco Malfoy_, of all people. She was not looking forward to the influx of Slytherins that would surely come with his wedding in May. It was bad enough to have Pansy around more and more frequently... and the idea of a_baby_ Malfoy coming shortly after the wedding, as Lucius and Narcissa had been unsubtly hinting to Draco for months that they expected, was frustrating to the point of being almost unbearable. She would have to do what she could to get away from the Malfoys, preferably before the wedding.

Harry hesitated for a moment, and she smiled at him. Just barely enough time since Neville's death had passed that they were capable of smiling at each other again without it being painful and forced.

Harry looked as though she'd just punched him.

Her smile vanished immediately. "Harry—"

"Wait..." He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. He opened his eyes and looked into Hermione's eyes with his brows set and his lips pursed. "Promise you won't hate me," he said.

Hermione was so stunned by the question that her jaw actually dropped for a second. "Harry... I... Who did you kill?"

"What? No one!"

"Torture?"

"Never in my life."

"Then how could I possibly hate you in present company?"

Harry smiled. A weight was instantly lifted off his chest, because he knew she meant it. She would probably be angry with him, but she really_couldn't_ hate him. They had no one but each other, and they would always have each other.

"I have a theory," he said.

"Try me."

Harry took one last deep breath, then he took the plunge. "I fucked Voldemort. Twice."

Hermione blinked. Her face went completely blank for a moment, then her forehead creased, and she went deep in thought, analyzing Harry's words the ways that Harry had analyzed Voldemort's note about Neville, trying desperately to make the words mean something other than what they appeared to. After a long minute of this, the muscles of her face relaxed again and she closed her eyes and took a very deep breath of her own. Her stomach gave an unpleasant flip and she glanced for a moment at the door to Harry's bathroom. A thousand things rushed through her mind, from furious swear words to betrayed sobs, but ultimately only one answer seemed appropriate: "Why would you do that?"

Harry shrugged. "I wish I knew. Do you hate me?"

Hermione shook her head. "No. I don't hate you. I'm a little bit disgusted with you and..." she drew in a staggered breath, "...and rather _upset_ with you, but I can't hate you. Do I really have any right to?"

"What do you mean?"

"After everything Voldemort did to you? I... I mean, it doesn't seem fair to act as though he's my enemy in a way that he's not yours."

Harry nodded.

"So if you can't forgive him—"

"Who said anything about forgiving him?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "So you _haven't_ made your peace with him, and you're fucking him?"

"Something like that," Harry said. "In the interest of full disclosure about exactly what my relationship with him is, can I show you something?"

Hermione looked offended, and Harry quickly cut off her thought process by adding, "It won't involve me taking off my clothes!"

Hermione sighed. "Alright then."

Harry haphazardly tugged his collar down and waved his wand, dismissing the glamour spell that he'd had over it. Hermione gasped as the two small but hideous dots became visible. They were still mostly black, but over the course of the week that had very slowly began to turn red. They still bleed frequently, to the point that Twoey had felt obligated to report to Rodolphus that he was frequently finding blood on Harry's clothes.

_That_ had been a pleasant conversation. Harry had been heading down stairs, and as he walked by the master bedroom Rodolphus had casually reached out and grabbed him and pulled him into the dark room. Harry didn't know if he'd been standing there for a while as part of a trap or if it had simply been coincidence, but Rodolphus was lucky that Harry's quidditch reflexes had dulled enough over the years in Albania that Rodolphus had no trouble pulling Harry's wand away from him before he got a fast curse in.

While most of the house was astoundingly normal looking, Harry did not like his first look at Rodolphus and Bellatrix's room. Even with a gas lamp on in the corner, it seemed surreally dark, and Harry was fairly confident there was a spell on the window preventing all sunlight from passing through the rather thin and dreary gray drapes. The room had its own fireplace, and the mantle of that fireplace was covered with skulls and shrunken heads. Aside from a few tapestries depicting the family trees of various pure-blood lines that Harry assumed Rodolphus was descended from (the largest of these by far was the Lestrange one, which went back a good millennium, while others only seemed to go back a century or two, even though the witches and wizards are the ends of them were listed as pure), the room looked like it had been done by an interior decorator who kept her office in Knockturn and who'd done a rather powerful drug before beginning. There were brutal paintings depicting muggles being murdered by wizards, witches being burnt at the stake, and famous dark figures from history casting horrible spells on muggles. Thankfully, none of them were moving.

Harry made a very unnecessary mental note to never allow Bellatrix to decorate _his_ room.

Without saying a word to Harry, Rodolphus had grabbed Harry's collar and tugged it downward. Harry had hissed at the pressure on his wound from his fingers brushing against them, but this only seemed to upset Rodolphus more when he didn't see anything. Harry was backhanded hard and an order to "Remove the glamour!" was barked at him.

Harry obeyed quickly.

"What the _Hell_?" was all Rodolphus said, and even that was only after a moment of surprised silence.

"They're snake bites..." Harry said. He let his eyes stray to the floor, which was by far the least offensive thing in the room.

"Snake bites," Rodolphus repeated, not as though to make sure he'd heard Harry correctly but as though to make Harry realize what a complete failure as a human being he was for having snake bites on his neck.

"Yes," Harry said through a sigh. He didn't think Rodolphus would quite believe him if he tried to explain that he already felt _horrible_ about them. "Snake bites."

"And is there anything that I can tell the Dark Lord that might save _both_ our skin when I explain to him that his horcrux was bitten by a snake _on the neck_?"

"You could try reminding him that _he_ is the reason it happened."

Rodolphus relaxed visibly. "Oh," he said. He let go of Harry's collar.

"Yeah," Harry said, recasting the glamour and fixing his robes.

"They're healing up alright?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't seem to have died yet. I doubt Voldemort left anything to chance when he healed me. Now can I—"

"So, not only are you fucking the Dark Lord, it's happening like _that_?"

Harry rejected several less polite answers and settled on, "I really don't see what business of yours that is..."

Rodolphus had just laughed.

Hermione reached out, and for a moment Harry was afraid that she was going to actually _touch_ the puncture wounds, which were still very sensitive. She didn't, though. Her hand stopped in the air centimeters away from the horrible marks, hovered there for a moment, then fell back to the bed.

"I don't understand," she said, for perhaps the first time in her life.

"Nagini bit me," Harry said.

The look on Hermione's face did not imply a sudden understanding.

"Because Voldemort told her to," Harry said.

"Why?"

"Because I dared him to endanger my life." ("Begged" an annoyingly loud voice in the back of Harry's mind corrected.)

"After you had sex with him?"

"No, before... or... _while_ I had sex with him, I think. Yeah, while."

Hermione nodded very slowly. She did not appear to understand, but Harry didn't think she was going to admit to it twice in such a small period of time.

"Well," Harry said, flipping his collar back up, "Now you know. Nothing Bellatrix or anyone else says can shock you now... Or, at least, if it does it's probably not true."

Hermione took a deep breath. "That's _all_?"

Harry nodded. "That's all."

"I still don't understand why."

Harry shrugged. "Neither do I, entirely. Ask Voldemort. He certainly has a pet theory." Harry opted not to tell her that Voldemort's pet theory matched with Harry's observations of himself fairly well.

Hermione shrugged. "Alright. I suppose it's not like you've killed or like you're suddenly convinced he's right about everything or anything."

"Not at all!"

Hermione nodded. "Besides..." She shook her head slowly, trying to shake off unpleasant thoughts. "I'm a Death Eater now. There may come a day when I need your forgiveness for something a bit worse."

"Ten!" shouted multiple voices downstairs. Narcissa's and Pansy's were the loudest, with Draco's and Lucius' only slightly softer. Rabastan might have been half-mumbling in there too.

"Nine!"

Hermione and Harry quickly went back to staring at Hermione's watch. They watched the seconds tick by as the Malfoy's counted down. Eight, seven, six—

Hermione grabbed Harry, pulled him in close, and kissed him on the mouth.

"Three!"

"What was that?"

"Two!"

Hermione opened her mouth to explain herself, but nothing came out.

"One! Happy New Year!"

Hermione pulled him in again and kissed him again, this time pushing her tongue into his mouth.

"Hermione!" Harry said, shoving her away. "What _are_ you doing?"

Hermione laughed awkwardly, not seeming terribly offended by Harry brutally shutting down her sexual advances. "Sorry," she said, reaching up to fix her hair. "I just didn't like the idea of _Voldemort_ being the last person you kissed thi—last year. Or the first person that you kiss this year."

Harry turned red from his hairline to his neck. "Actually, he's never kissed me..."

"He's never kissed you? You let him sick his giant snake on you, but he's never kissed you?"

Harry laughed. "It sounds worse than it is when you put it that way. I've never really _wanted_ him to kiss me, and I don't think he's the kissing sort... How would he, even? He doesn't have lips."

Hermione was blushing rather furiously herself now. "Well, I imagine he _could_. It would just probably feel... interesting."

They both laughed.

"But thank you," Harry said. "I got fucked twice last year. I suppose I should have been kissed once."

Hermione cleared her throat awkwardly. "I was the _only_...?"

"What? Did you think I was fucking Ron or Rodolphus?"

Hermione's face screwed up unpleasantly. "Neither. I just... I didn't think about it. And speaking of Ron, you probably shouldn't tell him about that."

"Think you two will ever get a chance again?"

"I think..." Hermione was quiet for a minute, "I think that anything can happen, at this point. I was allowed to _write_ him. That was a really huge step, wasn't it? And if I'm ever allowed to leave the Malfoy's custody, I suppose I'll be able to do whatever I want. It'd be... nice. Are you upset about Ginny?"

Harry wasn't sure if he was imagining the veiled question about his sexual preferences or not, but he didn't really know the answer to it in either case. It was not the greatest of his worries about fucking Voldemort. He shrugged. "What right do I have to be? _I_ broke up with _her_."

"Not by choice."

"And I started having sex with someone considerably worse than the man _she_ moved on to. By choice."

"Fair enough." Hermione shrugged.

"Not really." Harry sighed. "But it's my life. I'd probably better just get used to Voldemort for a little while. I don't imagine he's going to let anyone else get near me for the next few years."

"He's the jealous type?"

"No. He's the absurdly controlling type who's terrified that everyone is out to get him and that someone will kill me if he lets me out of his sight for too long." Harry shrugged. "I'd probably be a terribly boyfriend anyway."

Hermione laughed. "Don't be so hard on yourself! You and Ginny were great... and you're not a bad kisser, you know."

Harry's face was scarlet. "Thanks. You're, uh, pretty good yourself."

"Thanks."

There was a moment of silence, then they both laughed. After a night of reflecting on the last year of their lives, on the camping trip from Hell, on their newfound situations with Death Eaters, and on Harry's newfound relationship with Voldemort, of all people, there wasn't much else they could do.

They were going to be alright. At _least_ alright, if nothing better.


End file.
